“Why are people so preoccupied? What is genre in the first place? Who invented it? Why am I perceived to have crossed a kind of boundary?” Kazuo Ishiguro and Neil Gaiman discuss The Buried Giant, fantasy and genre for the New Statesman. Pair with our own Lydia Kiesling‘s review of the novel.
Ishiguro + Gaiman + Genre
Out of Service
Recommended viewing: Katrina Whalen’s short film adaptation of Charles Portis’s “I Don’t Talk Service No More.” Pair with our own Bill Morris’s review of Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany.
Nothing if Not Consistent
Fans of Moby-Dick should read Nathaniel Philbrick’s outstanding historical account In the Heart of the Sea. The book, which tracks the fate of The Essex, a New England whaling vessel sunk by a humongous sperm whale in the South Pacific, is vivid and harrowing. It’s also, as it turns out, only one of the naval catastrophes to befall George Pollard, Jr., The Essex‘s captain: a second wreck of his was recently located off the coast of Hawaii.
Blues Traveler
John Cline is retracing the Great Migration route from New Orleans to Chicago for his Oxford American column, “Arterial America.” In his latest dispatch, he discovers Jackson, Mississippi’s hip-hop community.
Paging through the end of summer
Now that summer’s nearly over (I know, I know, but I’m looking forward to fall. As if you can blame me) there’s a history of summer reading in the Boston Globe. And if you’re looking to squeeze in a good summery book this weekend, we’ve still got you covered, with our list of literary sizzlers. Get ’em while it’s hot.
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“на один процент” is “one percent” in Russian
Apropos of yesterday’s round-up of Russian social unrest: the children of Russia’s 1%.
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