Recommended Reading: Alex Preston on Milan Kundera’s first novel in fifteen years.
Festivities
Ask a Librarian
“Is it possible to keep an octopus in a private home?” “Are Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates the same person?” Oh, the things people have asked reference librarians.
The Bookstore-Hostel
Love reading and sleeping? Then we’ve found the perfect vacation destination for you: a bookstore and hostel combination in Tokyo, Japan.
Dostoevsky’s Fall from Grace
How long did it take Dostoevsky to go from being heralded as the “heir of Gogol” to being denounced as a “bad joke”? 15 days. Apparently he never recovered.
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Deeper into the “Twungle”
Margaret Atwood considers her experience of Twitter and describes how the wilderness of the online world is spilling over into her physical reality.
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Pre-Detective
Need more than just a hashtag to get ready for the new season of True Detective? Tom Nolan is here to help. At Salon, Scott Timberg interviews the biographer of Ross Macdonald, a crime fiction writer whose mysteries tackled the underbelly of California. You might want to read the new collection of Ross’s novels, or else our list of crime novels where women are the detectives.
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Dreaming with N.K. Jemisin
N.K. Jemisin speaks to Raffi Khatchadourian about writing herself into the stories she wanted to read, as well as what the future holds for her.
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Literary Rivalry
“‘I think she is better than J. L. Borges—who is good, but not all that good!” said poet Elizabeth Bishop of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Bishop was one of Lispector’s first English translators, but also one of her fiercest critics. Alexandra Pechman writes for the Poetry Foundation about their literary rivalry and grudging respect. Pair with Magdalena Edwards’s Millions review of Lispector’s The Complete Stories.
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