Recommended Reading: On the process of bringing old books back to life.
Book Preservation
Tuesday New Release Day: Canin; Jansma; Majka; Griffin; Kennedy; Perabo; Dacey; Montes
Out this week: A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin; Why We Came to the City by Kristopher Jansma; Cities I’ve Never Lived In by Sara Majka; Hide by Matthew Griffin; The Blue Hour by Douglas Kennedy; Why They Run The Way They Do by Susan Perabo; We’ve Already Gone This Far by Patrick Dacey; and Perfect Days by Raphael Montes. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Curiosities: Astronaut Food
Jonathan Evison talks with independent publicist Lauren Cerand about promoting books.Kindle shenanigans: “This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers.”Marking the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing, Kottke puts together a huge post of photos, videos, and links in commemoration.Our recent item rounded up all the “big” books coming out in the latter half of the year. PW alerts readers to “10 promising fiction debuts” coming this fall.Jacket Copy concludes its Pomo Month with an annotated list of “61 essential postmodern reads.”New uses for card catalogs. (via)The second issue of online literary journal The Critical Flame has arrived.Mark Sarvas offers a four-part interview with Joseph O’Neill. “I think I start with one idea. In Netherland, it was cricket in New York. Then there is an accumulation of sentences, and often just single words. Words that interest me. And I sort of build it up like a poem.”Amazon names the “Best Books of the Year… So Far.”
Plan B
“It’s rough out there for artists and writers right now, I know. There are days when you just want to throw in the towel, say fuck it, fake your own death, give insurance fraud a go, and live out of a Winnebago somewhere in remote Ontario. That’s a good plan—that’s a really good plan—but remember, you’ve got options.” The Paris Review considers the life of artist Reuben Kadish, who bought a disused dairy farm, made it a viable business in a decade’s time, and changed his medium from painting to sculpture in the process.
For those of us who refuse to trade in the typewriter, however, there’s always our popular piece on how to write a novel.
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Was Milton a Bard of Smut?
An Oxford lecturer finds a “filthy, innuendo-laden… smutty… coarse, and frankly misogynistic” poem supposedly by John Milton – a far cry from the lofty Christian sentiments of Paradise Lost.
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To Whom It May Concern
“But upon learning that the unmarried 60-something Ms. Welty was a fan, the 50-something Macdonald — Ken Millar, to use his real name, as he does in these letters — dashed off a note of thanks. A reply followed within a week.” On a new book of letters between Eudora Welty and Ross MacDonald. You could also read Jonathan Clarke on the letters of Willa Cather.