New this week: Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie; The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams; The Lost Landscape by Joyce Carol Oates; This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison; Cries for Help, Various by Padgett Powell; and Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Rushdie; Williams; Oates; Evison; Powell; Rash
Gary Shteyngart’s Book Trailer
This “book trailer” released by Gary Shteyngart for his upcoming book Super Sad True Love Story has been the cause of much recent hilarity. If you have yet to see it, look for appearances by Jeffrey Eugenides, Jay McInerney and actor James Franco.
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Good Intentions
“To make money, I’m planning on teaching English, or coaching recreational soccer, or something. But that’s not important because apartments are cheap, and that part, kicking around a ball, or helping Thai children have a better command of the English language, even though I don’t speak a word of Thai, will probably only be a chapter in my book. Those things will provide some nice blog-potential details, too. They’ll show the texture of my everyday life.” Travelling to the East for the sole purpose of writing a memoir.
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Hallberg Podcast
Our own Garth Risk Hallberg did a podcast with Three Percent, a "resource for international literature" at the University of Rochester.
“The particular loneliness of corporate chain restaurants”
Recommended Reading: Charles Thaxton on Merritt Tierce’s Love Me Back.
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Ramadan Kareem!
A belated “Ramadan kareem” to all of our Muslim readers! If you’re looking for some Ramadan-centric reading, the Poetry Foundation has rounded up a selection of poems, podcasts, articles and blog posts that should do the trick.
Narrating the Coup
“In times of tension it is particularly important to defend what is good, identify what would worsen the status quo, strive for balanced assessments, always hoping for the best, and try to identify and oppose any and all steps toward coercive authoritarianism.” Richard Falk narrates the coup in Turkey at Guernica.
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