Maya Angelou, poet and author of many memoirs — most famously I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — has died at 86. This video of Angelou reading her poem “And Still I Rise” may serve as a good start to a celebration of her life.
Maya Angelou Has Died
The Most Terrifying Books
With Halloween a week away, The New York Times asked Ayana Mathis and Francine Prose about the “most terrifying” books they’ve read. Their choices? Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Hans Christian Andersen‘s fairy tales. Pair their combined essays with Flavorwire‘s list of “50 of the Scariest Short Stories” and our own Ben Dooley‘s brief review of House of Leaves‘s “existential terror”.
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The Millennials Are Alright
The Bygone Bureau’s latest ebook, The Graduates, is intended to be “a response to all of these half-hearted pieces about how screwed Millennials are,” says editor Kevin Nguyen. “It’s true that graduating in 2009 didn’t provide the best job market, but in a lot of ways, those struggles have actually led to more interesting experiences and opportunities. And we wanted to capture that optimism.” You can catch two excerpts from the collection over here and over here.
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Best New Blogs
A fresh take on the year-end list: Bygone Bureau’s Best New Blogs of 2010.
Apathy at Fawlt
Fawlt is feeling apathetic, but not about their new issue, with fiction by Brian Evenson & John Sellekaers and Nic Kellman.
Melatonin, Menthol Lights, Jungle Gyms
At Trickhouse‘s Back Room, Ian Ganassi lists life’s essentials, along with a few I could do without.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Pamuk, Zambreno, Wickersham, Vonnegut, Achebe, Egan
New this week is Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s Silent House. Also hitting bookshelves are Heroines by Kate Zambreno, The News from Spain by Joan Wickersham, and more posthumously published work by Kurt Vonnegut. In non-fiction, there’s There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe and Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winner Timothy Egan’s biography of Edward Curtis.
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Let There Be
“LET THERE BE stress. Let the body respond to stress as it does to injury and infection. Let stress be a vulture that pecks at the mind and devours the body. This will make people less likely to be stressed. When they see stress wreak wrath upon the body, they will surely calm down a lot.” It seems the big problem with intelligent design is that it had a pretty sub-par peer review.
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