“There’s something about shopping for books where you’re open for anything. You’re faced with a wall of books, and you don’t know anything about most of them. At some point, it’s just you and the poems.” Carl Adamshick talks with the Los Angeles Review of Books about Powell’s and the “bookstore MFA.” Pair with our own Janet Potter‘s essay on loving bookshops.
Bookstore MFA
Kriegman Explains It All
This Splitsider interview with Clarissa Explains It All creator Mitchell Kriegman is fantastic. Among the many revelations that come out of the interview is this gem: “The most amazing person that you would never guess worked on the show was [The Hunger Games author] Suzanne Collins. She was the quietest, nicest person. Like having JK Rowling working on your show!”
Tuesday New Release Day: Woodson; Korkeakivi; DeWitt; Hertmans; Hemmings; McHugh; McInerney
Out this week: Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson; Shining Sea by Anne Korkeakivi; White Nights in Split Town City by Annie DeWitt; War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans; How to Party with an Infant by Kaui Hart Hemmings; Arrowood by Laura McHugh; and The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
New DFW
An excerpt from David Foster Wallace‘s unfinished novel, The Pale King, appears this week in The New Yorker. It’s good.
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Atwood in the Twittersphere
I dare you not to be charmed by Margaret Atwood’s account of becoming a Twitter user. “Despite their sometimes strange appearances, I’m well pleased with my followers.” (via kottke)
God, CEO of Heaven
Here’s the story of one entrepreneur so intent on disrupting the antiquated status quo within his industry that he quit his organization and set out to found his own start-up. You’ve heard this story before. It’s John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and supposedly it can help your career in ways you haven’t even realized.
Bad Behavior
There’s a scandal gaining traction in the UK, and it involves sending books through the mail. The country’s justice secretary, Chris Grayling, is standing by a new law that bans inmates from receiving parcels of books. According to him, the law is intended to make inmates “earn [their] privileges.” (h/t Page-Turner)
Tuesday New Release Day: Sebald; Ugresic; Storace; Nunn; Mailer
Out this week: A Place in the Country by W.G. Sebald; Europe in Sepia by Dubravka Ugresic; The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace; Chance by Kem Nunn; and new paperback editions of Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings and Tough Guys Don’t Dance.