Recommended reading: Brian Patrick Eha‘s goodbye to Brazenhead Books, published in the New Yorker. Pair with J.T. Price‘s piece on the closing of Brazenhead for The Millions.
Goodbye to Brazenhead
The Naval Academy’s Reading List for Life
What does it mean that so many faculty members at the United States Naval Academy have recommended Ayn Rand’s work on the “Reading List For Life?”
Tuesday New Release Day: Edugyan, D’Agata, Manguso, Ullman, Herbert, Shadid, Baseball
Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is now out in the U.S. Also new this week are John D’Agata’s much-discussed Lifespan of a Fact, Sarah Manguso’s The Guardians, Ellen Ullman’s By Blood and The Boiling Season by Christopher Hebert, who has an essay up on our site today. The new memoir by Anthony Shadid has seen its release date pushed up to this week. See our remembrance of Shadid. Finally, it’s Christmas for baseball fans: the 2012 Baseball Prospectus is out.
Bold, Clear, Rude
“I am going to propose: The rigmarole is truly underexploited. Everyone should write a ‘Conversations with Drummond’ about themselves and about every opinion-spouting person they know. For the historical record. For revenge. For the children. Especially if you’re well-known, or right in the middle of the action, or both.” Anthony Madrid for The Paris Review looks at Ben Jonson, William Drummond, and the rigamarole.
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Zora Neale Hurston: A Blurred Life
Michael Adno examines the unknown life of Zora Neale Hurston, "maybe the most important American writer to have ever lived."
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You Too Could Be a Turnip
Those of you with more than a passing familiarity with the Brothers Grimm will know that classic fairy tales were often dark and macabre. They’re considerably more frightening than the sanitized versions we read to our children today. At Salon, Maria Tatar talks to Laura Miller about her translation of The Turnip Princess, a new collection of previously undiscovered fairy tales. Sample quote: “There isn’t that strict division of gendered labor that you find in the Grimms.” You could also read Kirsty Logan on the trouble with fairy tales.