Recommended listening: Marlon James reads an excerpt from his new book, A Brief History of Seven Killings, which was included in our most recent Book Preview. Pair with The New York Time‘s review of the novel.
Marlon James Reads
Karen Russell and the Hungry Ghosts
Karen Russell recounts finishing her book in the midst of pregnancy, and the financial and time calculations that must be done to get to that last page.
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On Stage With Myself
It looks like today is your lucky day. This piece from The Literary Hub gives you two for the price of one: first, there’s Herta Muller’s gorgeous take on the poetry of Liu Xia, and next, a careful selection of those very same poems.
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Muses and Bodies and Art and Grief
Recommended listening: David Naimon talks with Lidia Yuknavitch about “Muses, Bodies and Biography.” Pair with Yuknavitch’s Millions essay on art and grieving.
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Not Just the Mind’s Eye
A new Tumblr, The Composites, takes descriptions of characters from novels and feeds them through police composite sketch software to produce images of their “faces.” Creepy and cool. (via kottke)
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Holiday Gift Guides
BoingBoing‘s holiday gift guide has lots (and I mean lots!) of great things for just about anyone in your life. They even highlighted two different whiskeys. Then again, if you’re only looking to give gifts to your favorite writers, Hannah Gersen has you covered.
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Decolonizing Our Shelves
“… Stop talking about diversity and start decolonizing our shelves.”At the Winter Institute 2018 (Wi13), keynote speaker Junot Diaz lambasted the publishing industry for talking — but doing little else — about diversity in literature, and implored librarians and booksellers to fill their shelves with diverse books. From our archives: an essay on race, gender, and Diaz’s writing.
“Silent” Reading
When you read silently, are you really reading silently? Or, as some researchers hypothesized in a recent study, are you “making ‘sound’ in your head?”
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