Out this week: Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen; The Jezebel Remedy by Martin Clark; Second Life by S.J. Watson; The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall; Language Arts by Stephanie Kallos; The Household Spirit by Tod Wodicka; Valley Fever by Katherine Taylor; and Rise by Karen Campbell. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2015 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Cohen; Clark; Watson; Hall; Kallos; Wodicka; Taylor; Campbell
Beach Reads
From Ian McEwan to Iris Murdoch, The Guardian offers a list of the 10 best seaside novels. Pair with our own Mark O’Connell‘s account of a close encounter with John Banville, whose The Sea makes the #8 spot.
Stephen Fry’s Culture Shock
Stephen Fry uses the Alabama-Auburn Iron Bowl to summarize the state of America.
What Doesn’t Translate
We’ve linked to infographics about the life cycle of translated books, but that doesn’t cover the difficulties inherent in translation itself. The New Yorker‘s latest Out Loud podcast tackles this subject as Adam Gopnik talks with Ann Goldstein and Sasha Weiss about priorities in translation and how we identify with the languages we use.
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Berlin Stories, Redux
“Home is the place where there is someone who does not wish you any pain.” Stop what you’re doing and go read this interview with Darryl Pinckney, author of Black Deutschland, over at The Rumpus. Here’s a great Millions essay on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, which serves as a sort of (misguided) guide map for the protagonist of Black Deutschland.
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“You could say that the book [A Sport and a Pastime] is a long poem to provincial France.”
In a video introduced by Paul Yoon, James Salter (who was recently interviewed by our own Sonya Chung) speaks about his time in France and his experience writing A Sport and a Pastime.
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Litterae Publicae
Azar Nafisi thinks the best way to pin down a culture is to take a look at its canonical works of literature. In The Republic of Imagination, as Adam Begley details in a review in the Times Literary Supplement, she examines a few of America’s classic novels, including Babbitt, Huck Finn and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. You could also read Jonathan Russell Clark’s review of the book for The Millions.