Few people have a stranger life story than Jillian Lauren. A former party girl of a royal harem in Brunei, she overcame a heroin addiction to become, among other things, a writer with two memoirs to her name. At The Nervous Breakdown, she talks about her latest book, her religious faith and her adopted Ethiopian son.
Harem Life
Another Under-40 on “20 Under 40”
Hitherto a Benedictine of the affectless, Tao Lin offers an appealingly unhinged take on The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40 List” at Canteen.
No Bill the Butcher?
If Martin Scorsese develops a TV series based on Gangs of New York but it doesn’t feature Daniel Day-Lewis or Leonardo DiCaprio, will anybody watch it?
Ann Patchett’s Byliner Original
Ann Patchett is the latest well-known writer with a Kindle Single. The Getaway Car is put out by Byliner, the recently launched champion of long-form journalism, which has recently published updates to Jon Krakauer’s expose of Greg Mortenson.
The Correspondence of Nabokov and Wilson
The correspondence of Vladimir Nabokov and the critic Edmund Wilson suffered from Wilson’s inability to appreciate Nabokov’s work. But by the spring of 1950, illness had affected both men to the point where a skilled correspondent in the ways of the U.S. mail became “a panacea to pain.”
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Bad Sex Awards 2012
Tom Wolfe has a chance to defend (er, ward off?) his 2004 “Bad Sex Award” following Literary Review‘s decision to nominate him for this year’s top honors (er, dishonors?). The UK publication has tapped Back to Blood and seven others for this year’s shortlist — and, despite popular demand, they managed to spare J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy. For some revealing passages from Wolfe’s book, check out my review.
Boo-gali
“Bengali children’s fiction’s limitless supply of ghost stories is matched by little other than its readers’ appetite for it,” writes Siddharthya Swapan Roy. “Anthologies dedicated to ghostly thrills come out with unfailing regularity and every publishing house that does not wish to upset its child readership pays due respects to ghosts and their stories.”
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