“All I know was that in Paris I felt haunted, like a double exposure photograph that shows a figure and then a milky specter behind. I felt stalked by a creature of my own making, a monster that was both my mother and myself.” Darcey Steinke writes about Paris, loss, and monsters in an essay for Granta.
Mothers & Monsters
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Best Food Books
Food writing fans: In the Chicago Tribune, several top chefs name their favorite books about food. (Thanks Laurie)
Russian Literary News
Russian literary news and awards — i.e. winners and runners-up of Russia’s Big Book Award — at Lizok’s Bookshelf.
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I Am Jack’s Graphic Novel Sequel
Chuck Palahniuk dropped big news at San Diego’s Comic Con last week: he’s currently working on a follow-up to Fight Club… in the form of a graphic novel. “It will likely be a series of books that update the story ten years after the seeming end of Tyler Durden,” he told attendees. “It will, of course, be dark and messy.”
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Writing and Reading Race
Recommended Reading: Katy Simpson Smith on who can fictionalize slavery and writing across time and race. Our own Edan Lepucki writes on reading slavery in fiction.
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Epic Fail Aces Its Lulz Studies
“While others … have explored the more serious contexts of online humor, particularly when it tilts into the grim and mean, in Epic Fail [Mark] O’Connell makes a useful addition to what I’ll refer to as Lulz Studies by attempting to put this variety of Schadenfreude in cultural-historical perspective.”
Book-Buying While Intoxicated
“Because I am a writer, people sometimes ask me how ebooks have changed the literary landscape. The short answer, for me, is that I have developed a compulsion to drunk-dial Agatha Christie several times a week.” Elif Batuman on buying (and reading) while intoxicated, at Guardian.
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Library Lament
The Library of Alexandria was ruined by fire, right? Maybe not. The library actually succumbed to budget cuts long before flames reached it. Annalee Newitz details the financial woes of the long lost library for io9.
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