Recommended Reading: Ruth Graham on the uncensored memoirs of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Pioneering
Steve Jobs: Bestseller
Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography is Amazon's bestselling book of 2011.
Native Daughter
"I know the words for elk and water. There are other Shawnee nouns as dense as koans with metaphor and meaning, but they remain inscrutable to me." Poet Laura Da’ authors the most recent Rumpus Saturday essay, a stunning meditation on concessions made to both the body and the body politic. A member of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, Da’ is the author of Tributaries, a 2016 American Book Award winner. See also: our review of Philip Meyer’s latest novel, The Son.
●
●
Talk of the Town
Michael Wolff's palace intrigue book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump Whitehouse has dominated the news cycle this week. After receiving a cease-and-desist letter, publisher Henry Holt and Co. responded by pushing the publication date up four days. Currently #1 on Amazon's Bestseller list, many independent booksellers say they have sold all their copies as well.
A Lust for Lists
"Why do we lust for lists?" Sandra M. Gilbert may not have an answer, but she does have a response to all those "100 Best American Novels" lists (and a list of her own). The Millions has a few lists too, of course - be sure to check out Janet Potter's "28 Books You Should Read If You Want To."
●
●
Curiosities
Sam Sacks offers up a review of Booker winner The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga for Open Letters"Obama spotted carrying poetry book" - It was Collected Poems 1948-1984 by Derek WalcottThe amazing, exhaustive, 7-part, behind-the-scenes look at the 2008 campaign from NewsweekRahm, Ari, Zeke: Which Emmanuel brother are you?In case you weren't already tired of this... the n+1 vs. the lit-blogs row of early 2007 lands in an academic journal. Our own contribution to the saga is duly noted.Wyatt Mason offers more thoughts on John Leonard (via Conversational Reading)Malcolm Gladwell's latest, The Outliers, hits stores a week from today. Gladwell introduces the book in a video at Amazon (scroll down a bit).Oxford researchers figure out the ten most annoying phrases.And the New Oxford American Dictionary has named its Word of the Year: hypermiling.As we remember Michael Crichton, "The Top 5 'Crazy' Michael Crichton Ideas That Actually Came True"Nam Le wins the Dylan Thomas Prize. We interviewed him in August.
●
●
Carpet Reading
Poet and antiwar activist David Shook is raising money on Kickstarter. What for, you ask? He wants to rain poetry on a city with the help of a drone. (h/t Poetry Foundation)
A Zone of Inviolable Privacy
Patti Smith’s M Train was released this Tuesday. Geoffrey O’Brien reviews her memoir at The New York Review of Books: “Perhaps M Train represents the attempt by someone whose career is as public as can be imagined to stake out a zone of inviolable privacy, albeit through the public act of writing a book meant for publication.” Need more music? Check out our Torch Ballads and Jukebox Music column.