“Why write in an unlovable genre with an inevitably hectoring tone? Dystopia, situated in a dangerous no-man’s-land between the pulpit of the preacher and the safe sniper post of the satirist.” Future futurists, take note: the New York Review of Books reviews Chang-Rae Lee’s addition to your dystopic shelf, On Such a Full Sea, and ponders the virtues of the dystopic endeavor itself. (Bonus: Lee writes about his own 2013 Year in Reading here at The Millions.)
Dystopia’s Meta-Dangers
“The particular loneliness of corporate chain restaurants”
Recommended Reading: Charles Thaxton on Merritt Tierce’s Love Me Back.
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Ridgway’s Hawthorn & Child Coming in September
New Directions announced they will publish Irish author Keith Ridgway’s novel, Hawthorn & Child, which was originally published by Granta books in 2012. Look out for the book this September. As a way to entice prospective readers, Tom Roberge does not mince words. “This is absolutely a New Directions book, and we think those of you who’ve fallen in love with Javier Marías or Roberto Bolaño or László Krasznahorkai as much as we did will agree,” Roberge writes.
The Pioneer Detectives Comes to a TV Near You
Last week Konstantin Kakaes — whose new book The Pioneer Detectives is our latest Millions Original — led a discussion on “how scientists search for truth and how that search isn’t always straight-forward.” You can catch a broadcast of that discussion tonight on BookTV at 7:30 PM.
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Indie Road Trip
Something to do with those last remaining days of vacation: go on a national indie bookstore tour, as designed by Chin Music Press.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Volodine; Norwich; Gonzales; Nganang; Brooks; Ulin & Kolsby
Out this week: Bardo or Not Bardo by Antoine Volodine; My Mrs. Brown by William Norwich; The Regional Office Is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales; Mount Pleasant by Patrice Nganang; The Houseguest by Kim Brooks; and Ear to the Ground by David L. Ulin and Paul Kolsby. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Maybe This Is Why They Take So Long to Finish
Robert A. Caro, who releases new installments of his Lyndon B. Johnson biography at a glacial pace, is apparently also working on another project, too. It’s “not a memoir, exactly,” he says, but it does concern “how he came to write the Johnson biography and its predecessor, The Power Broker.”
“Requisite dog bark. Far off.”
Recommended Reading: “Bitter Night in the Country” by Hayden Saunier.
Leaning
“Sandberg does not mention pleasure. Sandberg assumes instead that the feminist question is simply, how can I be a more successful worker?…Sandberg has penned not so much a new Feminine Mystique as an updated Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” At Dissent, Kate Losse, herself a former Facebook employee, critiques Sheryl Sandberg’s new and controversial Lean In.