Oh, look, the Paris Review freed Zadie Smith’s “Big Week” from the clutches of their paywall. (Bonus: you can subscribe to a dual subscription to both the Paris Review and the London Review of Books all summer long.)
Zadie Smith’s Big Week
Recommended Reading is Here!
Starting strong out of the gate with a new short story from Ben Marcus, Electric Lit‘s latest project, Recommended Reading is here! There’s also a single sentence animation and a letter from the editor. And best of all, it’s published directly to Tumblr, though you can also read the story on your Kindle or ePub reader.
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Praise for Emily St. John Mandel’s The Singer’s Gun
The Los Angeles Times loves Emily St. John Mandel’s latest novel The Singer’s Gun.
Practical Classics (Even When You Hate Them)
Year in Reading contributor Kevin Smokler’s new essay collection, Practical Classics, explores the benefits of revisiting the first books you read (even if you hated them). In fact, the difficult and excruciating books have a particular value. “Books aren’t all supposed to be our best friends,” says Smokler in a new Rumpus interview. “Sometimes they’re supposed to be that difficult friend who encourages us to do things that we don’t feel are rational or grown-up.”
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Appearing Elsewhere
Our regular contributor Sonya Chung is interviewed in the latest issue of Bookslut, discussing her new book Long for This World. “I write novels because it’s a place where I can bring all of who I am, and what I know, and what I don’t know but want to know, into a coherent, created world.”
Curiosities: Precise Obfuscation
“Chris Lloyd adores a minuet / the Ballets Russes and crepes suzettes / but Foucault loves to rock n’ roll / a hot dog makes him lose control… what a crazy pair!”James Yeh and a plate of Korean barbecue co-star in: My Dinner with Shteyngart.Deborah Eisenberg reads Wells Tower.Open Letters Monthly looks at Landscape in Concrete, a lost classic from the World War II-era featuring a not-so-ÜbermenschWhat planet are translators from? Paul Verhaeghen spills the beans, in remarks from the PEN festival, (via Three percent)Novelist David Francis, guest-posting at TEV, pits the writer’s interests against those of the publishing industry.W.W. Norton “friends” the Dalkey Archive.Richard Ford tells Nam Le, “Giving a colleague a bad review is like . . . seeing a hitchhiker and rather than picking the hitchhiker up, you run over him.”The Second Pass reappraises Denis Johnson’s 1983 Angels (whose characters reappear in Tree of Smoke).Finally, a piece on Reif Larsen’s T.S. Spivet that doesn’t mention the size of his advance.After only a year, Wyatt Mason’s fine Sentences blog reaches a full stop.An amazing and cute fashion blog from a 13-year-old.The indie bookstore tour writ large: novelist Mark Fitten is visiting 100 indie bookstores and writing about it. (via Maud)Wikipedia find of the week: The Jimmy Carter rabbit incident
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