“Still, it’s difficult to know whether [Shel] Silverstein, who died of a heart attack in 1999, after keeping out of the public eye for more than two decades, meant for us to read the book so conclusively. His biography and body of work suggest a subtler, and, in the end, perhaps an even more troubling, way of looking at it.” Ruth Margalit on The Giving Tree.
It Keeps Giving
English in India
Recommended reading: on the power of language and class, or, “How English Ruined Indian Literature.”
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Recommended Reading: Saturday Special
Recommended Reading: “Gregory’s Year” by Gospel of Anarchy author Justin Taylor.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Capote; Mitchell; Maguire; Rendell; Schumacher; Dunn; Strayed
Out this week: The Early Stories of Truman Capote; Slade House by David Mitchell; After Alice by Gregory Maguire; Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell; The British Lion by Tony Schumacher; We Five by Mark Dunn; and a book of quotations by Cheryl Strayed. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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The Handmaid’s Tale on TV
The Handmaid’s Tale is making its series debut on Hulu with Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) starring as Offred. Get ready for Gilead.
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NYRB’s Spring Reading
Daylight savings time = more daylight to read by, and as luck would have it New York Review Books is having their winter sale, so you have no excuse to be out of reading material. You can stock up on titles 50% off through the end of March / the beginning of actual Spring.
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Tangled Youths
Evan Hughes investigates the formulation of such writers as Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, and David Foster Wallace. He claims they and their generation “had youths tangled enough for ten novels.”
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How Could You Like That Book?
“On the other hand, I do spend endless hours mulling over the mystery of what others like. Again and again the question arises: How can they?” Tim Parks asks us why we enjoy reading what we read at The New York Review of Books. For Millions readers’ favorites, check out October’s Top 10.
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