Recommended Reading: Jami Attenberg on lists and literary culture. (h/t Kyle Chayka)
“You should not have to care”
The Humanity of Hobbits
Are hobbits human? Matthew Yglesias asks this question at Slate and mines J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to find out. The answer is yes; they are just shorter.
Tuesday New Release Day: Mitchell, Hadley
It’s a quiet week for new books. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which famously became a blockbuster bestseller after being released as a paperback original, is now available in hardcover for the first time ever in the U.S., thanks to a new Modern Library Edition. Short story master Tessa Hadley has a new collection out, Married Love, (as a paperback original, coincidentally).
●
●
Appearing Elsewhere
In anticipation of their 30 Below Story Contest, Narrative Magazine is highlighting work published on their site by writers under 30. Today my story, “I am the Lion Now,” has been added to the list.
●
●
Beauty Isn’t Logic Isn’t Beauty
Symmetry’s addictive. Beethoven sought it in the order of chords, Einstein in the logic of theory. Countless writers, too, have sought its imprint in the perfect mot juste. In Aeon Magazine, Philip Ball pleads fervently against the pursuit of beauty in logic, and logic in beauty. “There’s a reason why our galleries are not, on the whole, filled with paintings of perfect spheres… the search for an ideal, perfect Platonic form of the table amid spirals, hypercubes and pyramids has an air of desperation.”
A Lost Tale from Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Hodgson Burnett, best known for children's classics like The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy, shows her "weird" side in a new anthology.
●
●
●
Remembering What We Forgot
Recommended Reading: Poet and novelist Carmen Boullosa on her obsession with lost stories and found textual objects, as well as the efficacy of rereading.
Levente Szabó’s Great Book Cover Project
●
●