ICYMI: After Hachette writers banded together behind their publisher (piles of tweets, an author petition (pdf), a perplexing Malcolm Gladwell YouTube clip, and of course our own Edan Lepucki in Stephen Colbert’s pre-order campaign), Amazon proposed giving authors “100% of proceeds” from ebooks — that’s including Hachette’s share — while they hashed things out. You gotta admire that gumption. Halfway around the world, a French court order just banned free delivery for discounted book orders–so Amazon now charges one cent. Also: they’ve got drones. The Times concludes that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Amazon or perish?
Leemos En Español
"You are what you brought from your country? Or you are what you learned here?" The New York Times visits Librería Barco de Papel, one of New York City's last remaining Spanish-language bookstores. The space also operates as a community and cultural center for the Jackson Heights neighborhood, where roughly half of the 67,000 residents identify as Latino. If you want to feel some more feelings about the state of independent bookstores, check out this old Millions piece about paving paradise and putting up a Chipotle.
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Footnotes as Fine Art
Recommended reading: Jonathan Russell Clark examines "The Fine Art of the Footnote" for Literary Hub. Pair with his Millions articles on the opening sentence, the closing sentence, and doing away with quotation marks altogether.
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Writing the Body
Recommended Reading: E.V. de Cleyre explores the presence of the body in Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me.
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The Trees! They’re Glowing!
Some amateur biologists are at work replacing lamps with bio-luminescent trees and flowers, reports Andrew Pollack for The New York Times. Meanwhile South Korean scientists have barking up an entirely different tree for the past two years. (I’m sorry for the pun; here’s an image of a glowing beagle to make amends.)
The Poet Carried No Revolvers
Recommended Viewing: Go and check out the delightfully illustrated comic "Amiri Baraka Is in Contempt" by Nathan Gelgud at The Paris Review.
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Susan Orlean in Los Angeles
New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean sits down with L.A. Times Jacket Copy to talk about her new book Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. Orlean also discusses her dogs and her family's recent move to Los Angeles.
Fear in Christian America
Recommended Reading: Marilynne Robinson on the functions of fear and Christianity in America in The New York Review of Books. You could also check out Alex Engebretson’s essay comparing Robinson’s Housekeeping to the Gilead novels.
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In the End, Everything Turns Out / Right”
Recommended Reading: "An Old Man, Full of Days" by Matthew Minicucci.
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