Out this week: The Early Stories of Truman Capote; Slade House by David Mitchell; After Alice by Gregory Maguire; Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell; The British Lion by Tony Schumacher; We Five by Mark Dunn; and a book of quotations by Cheryl Strayed. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Capote; Mitchell; Maguire; Rendell; Schumacher; Dunn; Strayed
Tiphanie Yanique on the Destruction and Blessing of Love
“Lissa” by Michael Bourne
Tin House magazine has posted a short story, “Lissa,” by our own Michael Bourne as part of its regular online Flash Fridays feature. Also be sure to catch his Year In Reading entry that posted earlier today.
“You may better yourself by reading this, but who cares?”
“Usually, with a novel, you start with no idea what to do because your job is to create convincing characters and then they just run around getting crazy. The problem with writing a memoir, obviously, is you can’t do that because you sort of know what’s going to happen. Because you’re the character.” – Gary Shteyngart
I Actually Don’t Own a TV
“What does the professoriate watch off the clock, in their precious moments of respite?” Because academics need breaks too, Sarah Kessler asks her colleagues what shows they’ll be binge-watching this summer. If you’re one of those weirdos who still prefers books, though, how about binge-reading Henry James?
A writer by any other name…
Using pen names has been a common practice for, well, a very long time. George Eliot is a nom de plume, as are George Orwell and George Sand. Though not a George, journalist Sarah Hall chose to publish her fiction under a different name. She writes for The Guardian about this decision, the history of the pen name, and the reasons authors continue to use them.
The Latest on Google Books
The Google Books settlement has yet to be settled. The next hearing is September 15th.