This week, Football Book Club is taking it to the next level: They’re reading Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts and posting about Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half. If you’re keeping score at home, that means this week is All Brosh, All the Time. Also, as per usual, they will not be watching the NFL and not liking it one bit.
Football Book Club: Maggie Nelson’s ‘The Argonauts’
Lahiri on Salter
As part of a Paris Review series of essays celebrating James Salter, Jhumpa Lahiri writes “For over half my life, I have returned repeatedly to Light Years.”
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Steady As She Goes
“I prefer … to believe, in the weird and sometimes happy accidents that result—in this case—in kissing a beautiful stranger in the rain. It didn’t really change anything, but it wasn’t trivial. It was one of those encounters that rises up out of nowhere and sinks back into it, giving off light and energy as it goes.” Kim Addonizio’s new addition to Guernica’s “The Kiss” series is fantastic and life-affirming.
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That Rare Outlaw
Recommended Reading: Michiko Kakutani on a new biography of Johnny Cash.
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Kurt Vonnegut’s Doodles
When Kurt Vonnegut wasn’t writing, he was drawing. “The making of pictures is to writing what laughing gas is to the Asian influenza,” he said. The New Yorker has a slideshow of 10 of his cubist sketches. You can find more of his doodles in the new book Kurt Vonnegut Drawings.
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Tuesday New Release Day
New releases this week include the much-hyped The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume I. Also out in nonfiction is President Obama’s picture book Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (author of Seabiscuit), as reviewed by the New York Times, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, and, for hip-hop fans, Jay-Z’s memoir Decoded.
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Too Long Didn’t Read
Going to SXSW this year? Be sure to check out the “Too Long, Didn’t Read” panel our own C. Max Magee is sharing with Bygone Bureau editor Kevin Nguyen and The Morning News co-founder Andrew Womack. The Saturday panel will focus on the “renaissance of long-form writing,” and location details can be found here.
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Crosswords Uncrossed
Even if you’ve already seen the outstanding documentary Wordplay, you’ll still want to check out this Atlantic article on how Will Shortz makes his New York Times crossword puzzles.