Last week, I told you about Rebecca Solnit’s essay “Eighty Books No Woman Should Read,” which is a tongue-in-cheek riff on Esquire’s “80 Books Every Man Must Read” list. Now, here’s a fascinating rebuttal from Electric Literature in which Sigal Samuel ponders what might be gained by reading sexist old white guys.
80 Books You Can Read If You Want To
Don’t Even Ask about the Goggles
Looking to show your fellow beachgoers just how rich and erudite you are? Then mosey on over to the Paris Review Store, where you can buy four pairs of nifty-looking swim trunks that each cost $320.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Far
“I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.” Jonathan Safran Foer believes that technology is making us more detached. Pair with The New Yorker’s essay on netiquette.
O Detroit
You may have heard that our own Bill Morris has a new book on shelves. He talked about it with fellow Millions staff writer and California author Edan Lepucki. At the LARB, Diana Clarke reviews the book, which she calls “a sharp critique of the contemporary American post-racial narrative,” among other things.
Truly the Best Contest Ever
The New Yorker Book Bench is having a contest. Submit a photo of your pet dressed as a character from literature. My kittens are in for the worst two weeks of their young lives. Dante and Fur-gil? Tess of the O’Paw-bervilles? Jay Catsby?
Oh my god. So many possibilities.
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Not for Publication
Here’s a fact that’s either very surprising or not surprising at all: Samuel Beckett didn’t want his letters to see the light of day. He once wrote to Barney Rosset that he didn’t care for “the ventilation of private documents.” Despite this disinclination, his third volume of letters comes out this week, and it includes, as detailed by John Banville in a review for The Irish Times, a letter in which Beckett asks that none of his plays be produced in Ireland. Pair with: our own Matt Seidel on Beckett’s “Echo’s Bones.”
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Cher and Cher Alike
Breaking the English Ceiling
This year’s Forward Prize went to the poet Jorie Graham, whose collection The Dream of the Unified Field won the Pulitzer in ’94. Graham is the first American woman to win the prize.
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Avatar in Russia
James Cameron just can’t win with the Reds. Not just the Chinese communists, but the Russians, as well, have taken issue with Avatar‘s politics.