New this week: Amnesia by Peter Carey; Outline by Rachel Cusk; The First Bad Man by Miranda July; Binary Star by Sarah Gerard; Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda; The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins; Refund by Karen Bender; In Some Other World, Maybe by Shari Goldhagen; Harraga by Boualem Sansal; and West of Sunset by Stewart O’Nan. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 First-Half Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Carey; Cusk; July; Gerard; Buwalda; Hawkins; Bender; Goldhagen; Sansal; O’Nan
I am throwing up in my hat.
So, not only does The Paris Review now have a “booty call” tag on their blog, but certain of their editors can be seen dishing out fashion advice in the fiction issue of VICE. Party on, Paris Review. Party on.
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One Man’s BA is Another Man’s Treasure
Writing for Washington Monthly, Ezra Klein lambasts “the weakness of liberal arts education” and talks about how the Ivy League’s failures have led to Wall Street’s gain.
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We Can’t Make This Up
If you thought Cameron Diaz’s windshield sex scene in The Counselor was weird, things just got weirder for Cormac McCarthy. His ex-wife was arrested for pulling a gun out of her vagina after a domestic dispute about aliens escalated. Pair with: Our essay on McCarthy’s foray into screenwriting.
Tuesday New Release Day: Tyler; Shriver; Watson; Tremblay; Raymond; Juchau
Out this week: Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler; The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver; As Good as Gone by Larry Watson; Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay; My Last Continent by Midge Raymond; and The World Without Us by Mireille Juchau. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Visionary
At the Times Literary Supplement, Raymond Tallis reviews Hallucinations, a new book by Oliver Sacks that defines “sensational consciousness.”
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E-Romance Me
There are millions of pieces out there about how dating is the worst. This one from Alexandra Schwartz at The New Yorker which questions whether dating in the 21st century is even worth the effort is, if nothing else, worth the effort it takes to read.
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Gaining Experience
At Full-Stop, Eric Jett reflects on the wisdom of a possibly apocryphal commandment by Mark Twain: “Never argue with stupid people.”
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The Purpose of Punctuation
Recommended Reading: Artist Nicholas Rougeux removes all the letters in a text and meditates on the punctuation that is left on the page.
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