Recommended Reading: Chris Powers on the short fiction of John Updike. Pair with James Santel on Updike’s Collected Stories.
Ice Cream Etc.
Tuesday New Release Day: Cohen; Clark; Watson; Hall; Kallos; Wodicka; Taylor; Campbell
Out this week: Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen; The Jezebel Remedy by Martin Clark; Second Life by S.J. Watson; The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall; Language Arts by Stephanie Kallos; The Household Spirit by Tod Wodicka; Valley Fever by Katherine Taylor; and Rise by Karen Campbell. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2015 Book Preview.
●
●
Literary Threads
Literary-minded t-shirt purveyor Kafkacotton has a new t-shirt out. This one is a clever nod to Kerouac’s On the Road.
●
●
“Does it help writers to drink?”
Writing for The Guardian, Blake Morrison ponders the eternal question: “does it help writers to drink? Do they drink any more heavily than any other social group – doctors, lawyers, shop assistants or … advertising executives?”
●
●
52 Years Since Lolita
52 years since Lolita: The Reader’s Almanac recounts the many publishers who turned down Nabokov’s masterpiece in 1953. From one rejection letter: “I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.” (via @ElectricLit)
●
●
Why doesn’t more foreign fiction make it to the U.S.?
An interesting piece on why more foreign books don’t make it to U.S. shores. The take away? U.S. publishers generally don’t speak foreign languages and can’t readily assess a book’s quality.
●
●