Out this week: Mislaid by Nell Zink; A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me by David Gates; Odd Woman in the City by Vivian Gornick; The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North; The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry; Lifted by the Great Nothing by Karim Dimechkie; The Mountain Can Wait by Sarah Leipciger; England and Other Stories by Graham Swift; and War of the Encyclopaedists by Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Zink; Gates; Gornick; North; Perry; Dimechkie; Leipciger; Swift; Robinson; Kovite
Guiding Light
In case you missed it: Google bought Frommer’s last August. Then in April, Google announced that it would stop printing hard-copy guidebooks, so founder Arthur Frommer bought his company back. All of this has led Doug Mack to argue that not only do we need guidebooks, but they should be part of the literary canon. “They also stand out for shaping history, if not always intentionally, because of their authoritative reputation—they have long been the best insight into that which would be otherwise unknown.”
Elena Ferrante Revealed
Elena Ferrante has revealed her true identity. At McSweeney’s. You could also read this piece on Ferrante’s “encompassing vision of human experience.”
Drunk Pynchon
Here’s a literary challenge I can really support: one blogger has decided to mix himself every drink mentioned in Thomas Pynchon’s books. You can follow along at his site, Drunk Pynchon.
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Measuring Hell
“Given his devotion to empirical fact, it seems odd to think that Galileo’s most important ideas might have their roots not in the real world, but in a fictional one.” Galileo’s crucial contributions to physics may have come from measuring the hell of Dante’s Inferno.
Talking with Makkai
BOMB Magazine sits down with Rebecca Makkai, author of Music for Wartime and The Hundred-Year House. “People love to underrate plot, because it makes them sound like they’re beyond it, like plot is best left to Danielle Steele.“ For more Makkai, check out our interview with her.
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“a video a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s”
Open Culture dug up the only known recordings of James Joyce reading his own work. Maybe Finnegans Wake will make a bit more sense to you when you hear its thunderwords spoken out loud.