New this week: All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld; In the Course of Human Events by Mike Harvkey; Casebook by Mona Simpson; The Other Story by Tatiana de Rosnay; Vernon Downs by Jaime Clarke; and Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers, edited by Eleanor Henderson and Anna Solomon. For more on these titles and other new releases, check out our Great 2014 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Wyld; Harvkey; Simpson; de Rosnay; Henderson; Solomon
Cinderella, as Told by Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit gives the classic and rather dated tale of Cinderella an empowered, nuanced update that examines cultural myths about measures of prosperity.
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Vicious Circle
Michele Filgate was so terrified by Dave Eggers’s The Circle that she quit social media for a week and wrote about the experience for Salon. “I don’t want to become like Mae, sacrificing real-life friendships for the allure of the screen. I want to be aware of the world around me. I want to write about that world. I want to feel more alive, even if that means being lonelier in the process.” Pair with: our review of the novel.
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Twin Peaks literary criticism
With the end of the “Golden Age of TV,” let’s turn back to the show that started it all: Twin Peaks, “a revelation and inspiration for countless writers coming of age in the early 90s.” The new Twin Peaks Project begins with this nostalgic article in The Believer.
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“In 1941, sadness is at its peak”
Here’s a novel idea: using literature to map out the emotions of a time period. (1940s? Sad. 1920s? Happy. 2010s? …Don’t ask.)
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Lost Ideas
Remember that story you were going to write about your neighbor’s dog but never did? When you’re a writer, you have to know when to ditch both the bad and good ideas. At The Atlantic, Bob Brody laments all the stories he’ll never write and concludes: “It’s taken me a long time to learn this—that sometimes the best course of action is inaction.”
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The Time-Traveler’s Dictionary
Say you find yourself transported 6,000 years in the past – would you still be able to talk to your fellow English-speakers?
In the Kitchen with Shirley Jackson
Valerie Stivers takes on the poisoned meal from We Have Always Lived in the Castle—minus the arsenic-sprinkled blueberries, of course.
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Welcome Jacob!
We’re welcoming another regular to The Millions. You’ll recognize Jacob Lambert from his ongoing series “The Road (A Comedic Translation),” and he’ll be doing more humor pieces for us as well as whatever else he comes up with. Jacob has written for MAD Magazine for several years. He also has a regular column in Philly Weekly and freelances for various other publications. Welcome Jacob!
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