A Body Like Mine

“My wife likes to drive. I like to read aloud. So, she takes me places, and I take her places. It’s a match made in heaven — or at least in a Honda.” In honor of World Read Aloud Day, book critic Ron Charles writes about his love of reading out loud for the Washington Post. Pair with: an essay about the importance of reading aloud as adults.

Our own Janet Potter has teamed with Michael Shaub to launch The Book Report, an online weekly literary talk show. The first episode, which focuses on David Pearce‘s Red or Dead, is now available on YouTube. Pair their video with Mark Lane‘s Millions review of Pearce’s novel.

Norris Church Mailer, widow of Norman Mailer, died yesterday at 61 following a long battle with cancer. Mark Olshaker, president of the Norman Mailer Society, wrote: “She was the pilgrim soul who captured and won Norman’s heart and mind and who shared with him the last three decades of his life.”

In Karen Russell‘s Swamplandia!, there is an enchanting place known as the abandoned Library Boat. “It held a cargo of books,” Ava Bigtree explains, “In the thirties and forties, Harrel M. Crow, a fisherman and bibliophile, had piloted the schooner around our part of the swamp delivering books to the scattered islanders. Then Harrel M. Crow died and I guess that was it for the door-to-door service. But his Library Boat, miraculously, had survived on the rocky island, unscavenged, undestroyed by hurricanes. It was an open secret, utilized by all our neighbors.” Now something similar has moored in England’s canals. And, across the Atlantic, one New Yorker is keeping his own open secret.

“Save everything, she said. Everything. When your archive gets bought, they pay by the cubic foot.” Sarah Manguso in The New York Times about drafts in an era of digital writing. And while we’re on the subject , here’s what Ben Fountain, Emily St. John Mandel, Emma Straub and a passel of other writers have to say about writing that elusive first draft.