Out this week: Some Luck by Jane Smiley; Reunion by Hannah Pittard; The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue; Man V. Nature by Diane Cook; The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron; The Hundred Days by Joseph Roth; The Figures of Beauty by David MacFarlane; There Must Be Some Mistake by Frederick Barthelme; Citizen by Claudia Rankine; and Lila by Marilynne Robinson. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Smiley; Pittard; Donohue; Cook; Gavron; Roth; MacFarlane; Barthelme; Rankine; Robinson
Opiate of the Masses
Regardless of your beliefs, these videos explaining the major theories of religion are a good bet to tickle your fancy. They’re also apropos in light of Pope Benedict’s new book deal.
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A Community Library of Rare Black Books, Courtesy of Solange
Solange opens the Saint Heron Community Library, a media center dedicated to out-of-print and rare books by Black and Brown voices in poetry, visual art, critical thought, and design.
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The Verdict
Max’s verdict in the opening round of The Morning News Tournament of Books has been posted. Which book did he pick, Gate at the Stairs or The Book of Night Women? Hop over to TMN to find out. And don’t miss the match commentary, which has some great additional discussion of both books.
Wetlands
Recommended Reading: Blake Morrison on the literature of England’s flood-prone east coast.
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Staying Sharp
“There tends to be this idea that every piece and every assignment and every gig is always something speaking from the soul. We think that about great writers, that they’re incapable of doing hackwork.” The Rumpus interviewed Michelle Dean about women writers, the research process, and her forthcoming book, Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion. Pair with: Dean’s 2016 Year in Reading entry.
Longreads
This January, Penguin Random House, Goodreads, Mashable and the National Book Foundation are sponsoring National Readathon Day, a holiday which encourages Americans to join together for a marathon reading session. If you’d like to take part, you can start a fundraiser to help support reading education, or else enlist your friends and family to read with you on January 24th from noon to 4 p.m.
Fitzgerald Uncensored
F. Scott Fitzgerald was too provocative even for the 1920s. His short story collection Taps at Reveille was never published the way he wanted it to be. When the stories came out in The Sunday Evening Post in the 1920s and ’30s, all slang, slurs, and sexual innuendo were edited out. Now, almost a century later, we can read Fitzgerald’s original work in a new Cambridge edition.
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