Tuesday New Release Day: Ghosh; Murakami; Hoffman; Jackson; Miéville; Brelinski; Crucet; Celt

Meanwhile, in the commonwealth of Virginia, HB 516 is currently sailing through state legislature. What began as one mother’s outraged response to her 17-year-old son’s AP English assignment–reading Beloved by Toni Morrison–has morphed into a bill which would require school districts to do three things: flag any “sexually explicit” assigned material, allow parents to review all assigned readings to assess perceived levels of sexual explicitness, and finally, require teachers to provide alternate readings/avenues of study for any students whose parents deem particular content too inappropriate.

“Part of the allure of Bosnia for westerners, I think, has been the surprising nearness of the East. To put it more bluntly, and problematically: in Bosnia the East is tamed, less scarily dogmatic.” Elvis Bego draws a parallel with Madame Bovary at Bookslut.

“The appropriate term for what both [David Foster] Wallace and [Roger] Federer did, however, perhaps isn’t synthesis; more apt would be the Hegelian term, aufheben, which can mean a great many things – to lift up, to abolish, to cancel, to suspend, to sublate, to preserve, to transcend – all at once, where two existing terms are abolished, sublated, transcended by way of the orchestration of a collision between them, out of which a new term emerges, which then itself goes in search of a partner with which to collide.” A really fantastic review of David Foster Wallace’s String Theory from 3:AM Magazine.