Ten years after hurricane Katrina, Fatima Shaik reflects on freedom of expression, gentrification, and the state of education in New Orleans. You could also check out Gary Rivlin’s Katrina: After the Flood, featured in our 2015 nonfiction preview.
After the Storm
Invitation to a Beheading
“The author, whose novels thrum with ironic recurrences, might have been perversely pleased with this: thirty-six years after his death and twenty-two years after the fall of the Soviet Union with all its khudsovets, Vladimir Nabokov is, once again, controversial.”
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On Stage With Myself
It looks like today is your lucky day. This piece from The Literary Hub gives you two for the price of one: first, there’s Herta Muller’s gorgeous take on the poetry of Liu Xia, and next, a careful selection of those very same poems.
Unforgivable Sins
We’ve covered The New York Times Bookends column before. This week, Benjamin Moser and Year in Reading alumna Rivka Galchen discuss unforgivable sins in literature.
Summer Reading Is Confusing
Have you looked thoroughly at our Summer Reading List for Wretched Assholes Who Prefer to Wallow in Someone Else’s Misery and still aren’t sure what to read? Maybe this helpful flow chart from the Strand Bookstore, via LitHub, will help you settle on something.
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A Daisy Chain of Laffs
Turns out David Sedaris loves The Onion (but who doesn’t, really?). Slate asked more than 30 writers including Junot Díaz, Elif Batuman, Paul Beatty, Miranda July, and Chris Kraus to recommend their favorite funny books. Might we recommend you pair this with our own Jacob Lambert‘s comedic interpretation of Cormac McCarthy?
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