Curious what the Obamas will be reading over Christmas? The Scrutinizer in Chief stopped by Upshur Books in Washington, D.C. on Small Business Saturday to selected a nice little haul for the winter break with titles ranging from Jonathan Franzen’s Purity to Rachel Renée Russell’s Dork Diaries 1: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life.
ROTUS
Excerpt from The Lives of Others
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukhergee, which was just shortlisted for the 2014 Booker Prize, will be released in the US at the beginning of October. If you just can’t wait another two weeks, an excerpt is now available online. For more about the 2014 Booker Prize, read our coverage of the longlist announcements here.
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The Paris Review and McSweeney’s Collaborate on a Dual Deal
All month long, The Paris Review and McSweeney’s are offering a special dual deal in which you can order year-long subscriptions to both magazines for 20% off of their individual rates.
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Ignore the Pornification
At Guernica, Kirsten O’Regan delves into labiaplasty, a “relatively unregulated, frequently botched” and scarily popular new surgery. The oddest (and saddest) thing she learns about the procedure? Apparently a lot of young mothers urge their daughters to do it.
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Writing the Body
For Ploughshares, Emilia Phillips writes about “the corporeality of the lyric.” As she puts it, For some, the act of writing about the body is not necessarily the inclusion of the body as a poem’s subject but the body as the vehicle for the poem. Think of how repetition recalls movement, dancing. Think of how good a rhyme feels in the mouth.”
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Sentenced to Death
Brace yourself for disgusting, convoluted metaphors and run-on sentences. The winners of the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the worst opening sentence to an imaginary novel have been announced.
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Hemingwrite
Modern technology has finally developed a device that aims to aid all perpetually distracted writers – the cleverly titled Hemingwrite.
“Her prints certainly have muscle, and a lot of it.”
Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons, a collection of one-panel comic prints made by Flannery O’Connor during her time in college, is due out later this week. Meanwhile, Barry Moser exhibits a few of the highlights.
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Rachman’s Single
Tom Rachman, author of Millions Hall of Famer The Imperfectionists, has a new short story out as a Kindle Single: “The Bathtub Spy.”
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