“I find it amusing that people think trying to read a book in a language you do not understand is the most boring activity in the world. If you are interested in how literature works, these things are interesting.” On Lydia Davis‘s interest in learning to read Norwegian literature and writing at the end of the world, from the newly-launched Lit Hub.
To Learn Norwegian
Tuesday New Release Day: Minot; Antopol; Cameron; de Botton; Troy; Wolf; Cotter; Conde
Out this week: Thirty Girls by Susan Minot; The UnAmericans by Molly Antopol; The Bear by Claire Cameron; The News: A User’s Manual by Alain de Botton; The Quiet Streets of Winslow by Judy Troy; a new translation of August by Christa Wolf; The Parallel Apartments by Bill Cotter; and The Journey of a Caribbean Writer by Maryse Condé. For more on these and other new releases, check out our Great 2014 Book Preview.
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No Lie
“One lie I tell is that we care, generally—human beings—about each other. We could not, I tell myself in the moments just before the night’s dark hour, create The Odyssey or King Lear or Thomas and Beulah without a profound sense of The Other. Surely, were it true this thing’s a joke, nothing more, and a cruel one at that, we’d have no Dickinson, no Yeats, no freakin’ Rumi, read by Bly, loud on an old tape deck while I shower.” Pablo Tanguay on the art of lying.
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Sound-Word Index: Say What You Really Feel
Emoticons are unbelievably passé, right? And GIFs are just too much work, right? It’s time to better utilize our technological advancements. Behold The Sound-Word Index, a project by Blanche de Lasa, Stina Gromark, and James Godwin that can use “sound, volume and rhythm” to “help to translate our emotions hidden behind our screens.”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Cole; Russell; Coover; Grossman; Long; Thompson; Pirzad
Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief is out this week, as is Karen Russell’s e-book novella Sleep Donation. Also out: The Brunist Day of Wrath by Robert Coover; Falling Out of Time by David Grossman; Bad Teeth by Dustin Long; The Land of Steady Habits by Ted Thompson; and The Space Between Us by Zoya Pirzad.
Incorporating Elements
“I gave up on making a happy ending in the true sense a long time ago.” Japanese animator and film director Hayao Miyazaki is something of a legend. Over at The Literary Hub, Gabrielle Bellot takes a look at the expansive literary history of Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.
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Steve Jobs
60 Minutes aired a great overview of Walter Isaacson‘s bestselling (yet just released today) Steve Jobs biography. The book was also reviewed by Janet Maslin for The New York Times.
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