New this week: Academy Street by Mary Costello; The Children’s Crusade by Ann Packer; After the Tall Timber by Renata Adler; Recipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca Barry; A Slant of Light by Jeffrey Lent; The Water Museum by Luis Alberto Urrea; All Involved by Ryan Gattis; Odysseus Abroad by Amit Chaudhuri; The Language of Paradise by Barbara Klein Moss; and Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes and I Refuse, two books by Per Petterson. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Costello; Packer; Adler; Barry; Lent; Urrea; Gattis; Chaudhuri; Moss; Petterson
Will the Real Borges Please Stand Up?
“The thing Borges was most skeptical about was the idea of a writer, a man, named Borges.” Our own Mark O’Connell writes about Borges for The New Yorker.
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Jailhouse Rock
Can’t get enough of Orange is the New Black? Neither could The Missouri Review. Their new blog series, Literature on Lockdown, shares narratives from those who teach or write in prisons. This week’s post comes from Ace Boggess, a poet who spent five years in a West Virginia prison. “One thing about being a writer in prison is that you have not lost everything. You still have that driving need to speak whatever truth you know in whatever way you can. No one can take that away from you, not even the State.”
Only Sounds
“The most, the best, we can do, we believe (wanting to give evidence of love), is to get out of the way, leave space around whomever or whatever it is.” This excerpt from John Cage’s journals, forthcoming as Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse), is as baffling as it is beautiful.
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Jami Attenberg on Building a Writing Life
Jami Attenberg reflects on how a key moment of rejection allowed her to carve out her own path as a writer.
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Just a Game
Recommended Reading: On playing games and the cult of productivity.
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