Goodreads has launched a new Ask the Author feature, allowing readers to ask the likes of Margaret Atwood, Khaled Hosseini, and Jesmyn Ward questions “about the new worlds, ideas, and people they’ve discovered in books.”
Goodreads launches “Ask the Author” feature
Christmas Week New Releases
Summertime, another work of fictionalized autobiography (following Boyhood and Youth) from Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee arrives this week. Also, new this week is Psycho Too, an illustrated travelogue collaboration between Will Self and Ralph Steadman. Of the book, PW says "Self is far from a reliable tour guide, but his eye for seldom-trod byways and offbeat insights make him a diverting travel companion."
The Prince of Horror
"Hill had maintained a daily writing routine since age 13, completing four or five books as a teen and four more as an adult, and was now, at the cusp of 35, finally putting out a novel—a ghost story." GQ profiles Joe Hill about his writing, being the son of Stephen King, and finding success in his own right. From our archives: our own editor Lydia Kiesling's essay on King, nostalgia, and America.
More On Hitchens
In tribute to the passing of Christopher Hitchens, The Browser has collected some of his essays. His final memoir will be released in the states in April of next year.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Fine By Themselves
Was Virginia Woolf right that the Brontës were too isolated? Or were they just as housebound as their art required them to be? In the latest Atlantic, Judith Shulevitz examines the lives of the family, teasing out evidence that they all used loneliness to their benefit.
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Photographic Thaw
If you're going to accidentally leave almost two dozen unprocessed photo negatives out for 100 years, there's no better place to store them than a block of ice in Antarctica. Conservationists restoring an Antarctic exploration hut found the negatives left from Robert Falcon Scott's fatal 1910-13 Terre Nova Expedition to the South Pole. For a less harrowing tale of Arctic exploration, check out our review of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
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Marcel Proust Paid for Positive Book Reviews
"The French writer Marcel Proust paid for glowing reviews of the first volume of his Remembrance of Things Past to be put into newspapers." Letters by Proust, which will be auctioned off at Soethby's in Paris next month, reveal he was willing to pay handsomely for flattering references to his novel. See also: the first entry of The Millions' Hannah Gersen's column, The Proust Book Club.
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