“Is This a Golden Age for Women Essayists?” Cheryl Strayed and Benjamin Moser debate in this week’s The New York Times‘s Bookends column. Pair their piece with Anne Boyd Rioux‘s Millions article examining gender equity and lack thereof in nonfiction writing.
“Women Essayists”
Zadie Smith on Charity
“But money is not neutral; it changes everything, including the ability to neutrally judge what people will or will not do for it.” Zadie Smith has a short essay in the New Yorker on the trials of lending money to a friend.
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Dr. Doyle
When Arthur Conan Doyle wasn’t writing Sherlock Holmes, he was a practicing doctor. Thomas Goetz’s new book The Remedy discusses the history of tuberculosis and Doyle’s role in finding a cure with Robert Koch. The Daily Beast interviewed Goetz about how he came up with the idea for the book. “These two characters were part of a much larger story about how scientific discoveries evolve into social change.”
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Tuesday New Release Day
The latest effort from superstar translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky: Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is now on shelves. P & V’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories is in our Hall of Fame, and we interviewed the couple last year. Also out: Mark Twain’s long-embargoed Autobiography is now shipping; V.S. Naipaul’s The Masque of Africa; X’ed Out by graphic novel master Charles Burns; Avi Steinburg’s literary memoir Running the Books: Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian; and the odd literary project that is James Franco has a new collection out, Palo Alto
Mrs. Rowling
J.K. Rowling is one of the most successful writers in the world, but the one person she wanted to see her success never got to — her mother. “She never knew about Harry Potter – I started writing it six months before she died, so that is painful. I wish she’d known,” she said during an interview with BBC Radio 4. She discussed her mother’s death, multiple sclerosis, rugby, and more when she guest edited an edition of “Woman’s Hour.”
End of an Era
The final installment of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, The Story of the Lost Child, hits shelves next week. Emma Adler at Electric Literature has compiled a helpful Ferrante Study Guide if you’re feeling a bit lost. Cora Currier’s Millions essay on “reading Italy” through Elena Ferrante’s body of work is an ideal complementary read.
Tuesday New Release Day: Bezmozgis; Pratchett; Simpson; McCabe; Oliver; Moran
Out this week: The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis; A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction by Terry Pratchett; Ballroom by Alice Simpson; Hello Mr. Bones & Goodbye Mr. Rat by Patrick McCabe; Rooms by Lauren Oliver; and How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran, who released an essay collection two years ago. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview.
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