This year is all about #readwomen2014 and #weneeddiversebooks. Faint Promise of Rain, the debut novel from Anjali Mittar Duva, satisfies all these criteria. The book is just out from SheWrites press and is set in the turbulent, caste-driven setting of the Mughal empire. Read an excerpt over at Bloom.
Raining Granduer
A Beginner’s Guide to Drugs For Girls
Tasteless and horrifying–nay, even a sign of the apocalypse–or rather excellent advice for college-bound young ladies? You decide: Vice Magazine‘s “A Beginner’s Guide to Drugs For Girls.” (A taste: “Here are some pointers for the beginners out there so you can get high without becoming that girl slumped in the corner of the night bus with vomit all over your shoes and lockjaw so bad your teeth have all snapped in half.”)
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You ninnie-hammer flycatcher!
Short on insult fodder? In that case you’ll want to read Colin Burrow’s review of Melissa Mohr’s Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing. It includes such notables as: “slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubbardly lowts … slutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, [and] codshead loobies.” In the end, “swearing is one of the most basic human acts,” he writes.
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Behind the National Book Awards
Our own Edan Lepucki interviewed National Book Award finalists George Saunders and Rachel Kushner for the National Book Foundation. Saunders discussed money issues in his writing. “Now I feel like paucity vs. grace is one of the great American issues—we all live with it every day.” Kushner explained her writing process. “The sentences are beads on a string; I see each one as essential.”
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Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream
How did Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean create one of DC’s most popular comics in history? The Guardian finds out the inspiration behind The Sandman. McKean shares the stories behind his favorite covers, and Gaiman also addresses his resemblance to Dream. “I suppose he looks like me, though. But that’s one of those peculiar things where you gradually start to look like your dog.”
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Poet Cops
“The worlds of poetry and law enforcement would seem to share little. But a few poet cops hope to change that perception, one line at a time.”
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Who doesn’t love to hit happy hour after work?
Christine Sismondo believes bars deserve more credit for “produc[ing] a particular type of public sphere in colonial America.” She discusses her new book America Walks Into a Bar with The Smithsonian’s Rebecca Dalzell.