Tiananmen at 25

It’s not often that a writer has an essay collection and a debut novel come out in the space of a few months, but that’s exactly the situation of Year in Reading alum Roxane Gay, whose novel An Untamed State and collection Bad Feminist are both getting published this year. At Bookforum, Margaret Weppler reads An Untamed State, which displays, she writes, “a staggering sense of strength, confidence and integrity.”

Megaupload’s demise has the internet in an uproar, but the shutdown of the sharing site is unlikely to put a dent in online piracy. Still, sites such as FileSonic, FileServe, and and Uploaded.to have taken matters into their own hands by disabling sharing access in the United States, and MediaFire’s CEO has issued a preemptive statement on the matter. None of this is particularly surprising, though, which is why it’s so refreshing–for all fans of Schadenfreude–to learn that Kim Dotcom, Megaupload’s “Goldfinger”-esque founder, plans on releasing an album in the near future.

Yesterday was Fat Tuesday down in New Orleans, and if you missed the action down there, you can certainly get a taste of the local flavor by reading Rick Bragg’s 1997 piece in The New York Times, “New Orleans Doesn’t Wait for Friday.” (via)