Book reviews are great and all, but even we sometimes feel they’re missing something. Enter Kevin Thomas, whose HORN! illustrated reviews for The Rumpus are beautiful and informative in under 9 panels. Compare his pieces on Roxane Gay‘s An Untamed State or Leslie Jamison‘s The Empathy Exams to our reviews here and here, and be sure to check out the just-published HORN! The Collected Reviews.
A Review in Comics
Kandy Kakes and Pathologies
Is anyone else hungry, now? Caution: this review of Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine from The New Inquiry is a real appetite inducer.
Flimflam
Here’s a simple poll idea we’re amazed we hadn’t thought of before: asking famous writers to pick their favorite words. In The Guardian, Hilary Mantel, Tessa Hadley and others (including Year in Reading alum Eimear McBride) choose their picks for an exceedingly odd vocabulary list.
In Kanye Land
What happens when you put one of the biggest literary egos together with music's biggest ego? A movie. Bret Easton Ellis is working with Kanye West on a film. "He came and asked me to write the film," Ellis told Vice. "I didn't want to at first. Then I listened to Yeezus...I thought, regardless of whether I'm right for this project, I want to work with whoever made this." This is an interesting pairing because Kanye definitely isn't a reader.
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Ishiguro + Gaiman + Genre
"Why are people so preoccupied? What is genre in the first place? Who invented it? Why am I perceived to have crossed a kind of boundary?" Kazuo Ishiguro and Neil Gaiman discuss The Buried Giant, fantasy and genre for the New Statesman. Pair with our own Lydia Kiesling's review of the novel.
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Two Must Read Poets Converse
Eve Ewing recently released her debut poetry collection, Electric Arches, and we dubbed it one of our must-read poetry books last month. Year in Reading alum (and another Millions favorite) Kiese Laymon called her for a Guernica magazine interview and the result is a wonderful discussion on shea butter, Jordans, writing with young people as her primary audience and Assata Shakur as a literary inspiration.
Tuesday New Release Day: Pollan, Sedaris, Stelter, Currey, Thompson, Stothard, Rutherfurd, Wecker, Riley
The headliners this week are on the non-fiction side: Michael Pollan's Cooked and Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris. Also new in non-fiction: Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV by the Times' Brian Stelter and Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. In fiction: The Humanity Project by Jean Thompson, The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard, Paris by Edward Rutherfurd, The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, and The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope by Rhonda Riley.