There are plenty of good reasons to read classic literature, but Mary Beard reminds us that there’s a different kind of classic that’s worth revisiting and questioning. “You do the ancient world much greater service if you keep arguing with them.”
“Keep Arguing”
“Dressed to the nines, ready for the first martini”
Next time you wait for your date to finish getting ready, occupy yourself with a poem.
You down with OPP 100?
The 100th episode of Brad Listi’s Other People Podcast is here, and it’s with George Saunders, and they talk about Ayn Rand, grad school, and a lot of other things too.
Great Sentences
We’ve been writing quite a bit about our favorite books from this year, but Brooklyn Magazine is going one step further and listing 2014’s best sentences.
21 Authors for 2015
Recommended recommendations: 21 of the best debut and sophomore works being published this year, compiled by Refinery29. For even more, be sure to check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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In Pictures
A collection of striking photos of numerous well-known contemporary writers, in two galleries. Somehow these pictures exude the literary.Blogger lonelysandwich makes the only half toungue-in-cheek observation that the original cover of tennis fan David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest shares a color scheme with those Andre Agassi Nikes that were all the rage in the early ’90s.George Saunders appeared on Letterman last week, as you may have heard. onegoodmove put the clip online.
Tuesday New Release Day: Choi, Aw, Zambrano, Roth, Banville
New this week: My Education by Susan Choi, Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw, Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrano, The Unknowns by Gabriel Roth, and a new edition of a previously hard to come by early collection of stories by John Banville, Long Lankin. Stay tuned for our big second-half preview with many, many more anticipated books, coming in less than a week.
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