Out this week: The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman; The Kills by Richard House; When the World Was Young by Elizabeth Gaffney; Secrets of the Lighthouse by Santa Montefiore; The Scatter Here is Too Great by Bilal Tanweer; Ride Around Shining by Chris Leslie-Hynan; Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks; The Liar’s Wife by Mary Gordon; The Dog by Jack Livings; Bluff City Pawn by Stephen Schottenfeld; Beneath the Neon Egg by Thomas E. Kennedy; 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino; and Bad Feminist by Year in Reading alum Roxane Gay, who also came out with a novel a few months ago.
Tuesday New Release Day: Grossman; House; Gaffney; Montefiore; Tanweer; Leslie-Hynan; Brooks; Gordon; Livings; Schottenfeld; Kennedy; Bertino; Gay
Poetry is Back (or it Never Left)
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Scaring Men
Here are a couple Halloween-related essays from the good people at The Literary Hub: This fascinating literary history of witches by Jess Bergman, and this piece by Tobias Carroll on non-fiction writers crossing the supernatural line between fantasy and reality.
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Public Access Poetry
In 1977-1978, a public access TV show called Public Access Poetry featured leading poets from across the country (Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Eileen Myles, John Yau, Brad Gooch). Thirty-one episodes are now online, but the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s is seeking funding to post the remaining fifteen reels.
Take Two
Last week, to mark the release of The First Bad Man, we interviewed Miranda July here at The Millions. In Bookforum, you can read another interview with July, who talks about striving to mimic the feeling of “purposely unfinished work.”
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Boys
Rest assured, fellow Millennials: even Balzac had to intern.
The First Perec
On the rediscovery of Georges Perec‘s first novel, Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere, a book “connected by a hundred threads to every part of the literary universe that Perec went on to create—but not like anything else that he wrote,” from the New York Review of Books.
Tuesday New Release Day: Murakami; Williams; Steinke; Cao; Bausch; Flanagan; Row
Haruki Murakami’s latest (which we reviewed) is out this week, as is a new edition of Augustus, the 1973 National Book Award winner by Stoner author John Williams. Also out: Friendswood by Rene Steinke; The Lotus and the Storm by Lan Cao; Before, During, After by Richard Bausch; The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan; and Your Face In Mine by Jess Row (which I wrote about for our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview).
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