“It’s a critical dilemma in my reading and writing but also a real-life dilemma in a family like mine, with Alzheimer’s in our genes: How do you locate the personhood in someone who is, for neurobiological reasons, no longer the person you knew? Is there a way to be true to medical fact and still find something that is transcendently human?” Stefan Merrill Block writes about the literature of Alzheimer’s and Matthew Thomas‘s We Are Not Ourselves, which Lisa Peet reviewed for The Millions.
Alzheimer’s & Literature
‘Tis the season
‘Tis the season for book gifting and sales! Danielle Dutton‘s Dorothy, a publishing project, is offering a special holiday deal on its two seasons of terrific books.
Making the Puzzle More Hip
Meet the 23-year-old who’s been tasked with “injecting some swag” into the “traditionally conservative New York Times [crossword] puzzle.”
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New Covers for Anticipated Books
A couple more highly anticipated fall books now have cover art. J.K. Rowling’s post-Harry Potter effort The Casual Vacancy features a simple, bold design. And the cover of Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth is a throwback to the design motifs of several decades ago.
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“Time is the substance from which I am made.”
Yesterday was Jorge Luis Borges‘ 112th birthday, and you can celebrate belatedly by reading his Paris Review interview and his treatment in The New York Review of Books.
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Mad Content
Is there a difference between journalism and advertising? Buzzfeed doesn’t seem to think so.
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The Orange Eats Creeps Mixtape
Christopher Higgs was teaching Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps, and one of his students was inspired to make a mixtape featuring “the twisted, crusty, and often sublime characters found within the novel.” (The book, by the way, was one of my selections for Year in Reading last year.)
The Right Kind of Ambivalence
In the latest entry in By Heart, which I’ve written about before, Thirty Girls author Susan Minot explains why she prefers to read multiple books at once instead of reading through single books from start to finish. Her reasoning? Books are “worlds to dip in and out of, and my relationship to them is continually deepening and evolving.”
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