Recommended Reading: Iranian novelist-in-exile Shahriar Mandanipour talks about censorship, religion, and love in Little Village.
Censoring an Iranian Story
Bring Me That Book, STAT
See you later, creepy Amazon drones — delivery dudes on mopeds are the future! There is a new service called NearSt. which is offering book delivery within the hour. So far the service is only available in London, but with over forty London bookshops already utilizing the service, it seems poised to take over at least a small corner of the market.
Coetzee on Murray
Millions favorite J. M. Coetzee analyzes “the angry genius” of Les Murray for The New York Review of Books.
Novel-Gazers
According to a survey published in PLoS One between 1960 and 2008 there has been a steady increase in the use of words and phrases that emphasize self-absorption in books. This leads researchers to conclude that we’re growing more narcissistic.
Jonathan Lethem’s New York
At The Rumpus, Richard Greenwald writes about the novels of Jonathan Lethem, urban gentrification, and the Sisyphean feat of achieving authenticity in New York.
But How Many Samples Does it Use?
One good way to spend your Sunday: reading a 7,834-word Atlantic profile of Kanye West. Heck, even Obama’s a fan.
Twitter Fiction Festival
On Friday Twitter announced their new Twitter Fiction Festival, a “virtual storytelling celebration.” The festival will feature “creative experiments in storytelling from authors around the world,” and you can submit story proposals over here.