Chief among your more anxiety-producing kinds of literature is the genre of books geared towards expectant mothers. Examples of the genre offer every bit of advice imaginable — much of it contradictory — and condemn a laundry list of relatively common behaviors. At Salon, our own Lydia Kiesling recounts her own dive into the pregnancy-lit waters. This might also be a good time to read fellow staff writer Edan Lepucki on the perils of reading while expecting.
What to Expect
Accounting For Taste
Accounting for taste: a Cambridge University psychologist has concluded that people’s aesthetic tastes can be broken down into five “entertainment-preference dimensions.” (via Book Bench)
Tonight on 4th Avenue
Tonight at the Pacific Standard Fiction Series in Brooklyn, Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians, will be reading with Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief. As usual, I’ll be hosting; it would be great to see you there. For more information, see Time Out New York.
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50 Favorite Fictional Women
Fifty authors, editors, and publishers, including Year in Reading alumnae Rachel Cantor and Julia Alvarez, have come together to discuss their favorite fictional women at Brooklyn Magazine.
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Boiled Down
“Like reading, love works in roughly the same way every time, but the details of any given case are irreducibly particular, and it’s in the details that everything happens.” Lidija Haas on Elif Batuman’s debut novel, The Idiot. (You could also read our review by Virginia Marshall.)
A Postcard from Your Favorite Author
This month The Common launches its sixth annual postcard auction, headlined by André Aciman, Mira Jacob, Ann Patchett, George Saunders, and many, many more
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Burrito Lit Vol. 2
Attention literature-lovers and burrito-consumers: Chipotle has announced the second batch of writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Amy Tan, and Neil Gaiman, for its Cultivating Thought series, which places short pieces of writing on soda cups and paper bags (we covered the first series here).
When Good Doesn’t Win the Day
Recommended Listening: On NPR’s All Things Considered, Petra Mayer offers advice to “literature’s unpunished villains.”
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Imaginary Oklahoma
“Imaginary Oklahoma” is an ongoing platform at This Land Press in which “some of today’s most important and influential writers combine with artists from outside the state [of Oklahoma] to provide a fictional take on this place we call home.” New Yorker editor, author of Celebrity Chekhov, and chart enthusiast Ben Greenman has written a piece entitled “Always and Forever.”