“I think what I would really most like to write about is palm trees and bougainvillea and hummingbirds. I would like to go into the desert and write about salamanders and the Grand Canyon, but history keeps rupturing my experience because politics are everywhere.” National Book Award winner Robin Coste Lewis on overcoming brain damage and becoming a poet. Pair with Andrew Kay’s Millions essay on the power of poetry.
The Voyage of the Poet
Flotsam and Jetsam
Check out some of the good stuff floating around:A bookstore on a boat at The CS MonitorSimilarties between David Mitchell’s Number9Dream and Cloud Atlas at Conversational Reading.Tingle Alley discovers that Zadie Smith’s hubby Nick Laird may be getting preferential treatment in the book pages.Aelfred of Dunwoody Recalls a Viking Incursion at Wal-Mart, 848 AD. You can’t really beat this.
And They Lived Just Fine From There On Out
“Once upon a time a woman never got married, but had many fulfilling relationships, a job that kept her comfortable, an apartment that she got to decorate just for her, and hobbies that stimulated her mind.” Six fairy tales for the modern woman.
Criminal Justice in America: A Failure
William Stuntz’s book The Collapse of American Criminal Justice investigates “how, over the past 50 years, our criminal justice system had been transformed into an unfair, amoral bureaucracy–one that had given up on the very idea of justice.” Its genesis is worth reading about. So, too, is this related article in the most recent edition of n+1, “Raise the Crime Rate.”
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The NYRB Classics Spring 2014 Preview
NYRB Classics just released the first installment of their Spring 2014 Preview, and it features the likes of William H. Gass, Jean-Patrick Manchette, and Qiu Miaojin. Stay tuned for the second installment, which they say will come soon.
Tuesday New Release Day: Adiga; Raymond; Ruskovich; Peacock; Williams; Gay
Out this week: Selection Day by Aravind Adiga; Freebird by Jon Raymond; Idaho by Emily Ruskovich; The Analyst by Molly Peacock; Falling Ill by C.K. Williams; and Difficult Women by Roxane Gay.
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Let’s Start a Gallery of Found Art
“Italian art historians claim they have found 100 previously unknown works by Caravaggio.”
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tl;dr
It’s the last day to vote on panels at SXSW interactive 2013. So if you wanna hear how our editor in chief, C. Max Magee, and our friends Andrew Womack, from The Morning News, and Kevin Nguyen, from The Bygone Bureau, have changed the game with independent long form digital publishing, you better cast your vote today.
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