Nobody wants to be a Hufflepuff! Over at The Atlantic, David Sims defends the oft-maligned Harry Potter house for their egalitarian ethos and general goodness. At The Millions, Michelle Dean’s essay about the value of J.K. Rowling’s Potter series will have you wanting to give them a re-read.
A Lot o’ Duffers
Time to Grow Up
What’s behind the rise of the new-adult genre of fiction? You could blame the rise of Millennials, but that would be, as Emily Landau argues in a piece for the Canadian magazine The Walrus, too cheap and reductive to really answer the question. Instead, she says that we should look at NA as fundamentally similar to YA, with the main difference being that NA books portrays characters on the cusp of independence. (Related: we polled a group of high school students to find out their favorite YA books of 2013.)
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The Secret Life of Books
“They might underline a page number, draw a little star on the last page, or write their first initial somewhere in the book.” A librarian in Scotland discovered a secret code used by elderly patrons to track which books they already read. From our archives: an essay on the importance of libraries and how they can stay relevant.
Rion Amilcar Scott on the Comforting Familiarity of Clichés
Rion Amilcar Scott explores how the familiarity of clichés can comfort those in the midst of grieving
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The Squirrels Are Coming!
Whether they’re “coordinat[ing] kamikaze attacks on the power grid,” “damaging [a nuclear missile] base’s physical infrastructure,” or even just water-skiing, I feel that it must be said unequivocally: I for one welcome our new squirrel overlords.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Pochoda, Schine, Bolaño
New this week: Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda, Fin & Lady by Cathleen Schine, and, available for the first time ever as ebooks, Roberto Bolaño’s masterpieces 2666 and The Savage Detectives. There are many, many more anticipated books on offer in our big second-half preview, published this week.
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