“A smiling, diverse lie of face paint and broken dreams.”
An Intrepid Voyage
Emma Watson’s book club will now be reading Year in Reading alumna Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, which “rewards us with an expansive way of considering identity, caretaking, and freedom.”
News Roundup
Like bestseller lists? The Book Standard’s giving them away for free for the next two weeks.Alibris is bought by a private equity firm. PW article suggests Abebooks could be next. (via BookFinder blog)Small publishers book big rewards (via Mumpsimus), but…Bookshops fall prey to online sales.
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Selfies As High Art; Selfie As Word of the Year
Move over, “GIF.” (Or, more accurately: animate yourself away from us in an unending loop.) There’s a new Oxford Dictionaries word of the year. Enter, “selfie,” a word of Australian origin that describes an ostensibly new “digital affair, [that’s actually] a novel iteration of an old form: the self-portrait.” (They even come with overarching themes of mortality.)
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Most Important Meal
“Anyone reading my fiction would never guess how seriously I take food.” Extra Crispy has an interview with Junot Díaz about his diet, with particular attention given to breakfast: “I split my time between two cities so when I’m in Boston there’s a Dominican restaurant called Merengue that serves the classic Dominican breakfast of mangú, fried egg, and fried salami. I leave off the fried cheese because well, damn.” If you’re hungry for more, might we also suggest our own Nick Ripatrazone‘s ode to the day’s first meal, as it figures in both literature and life.
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