Over at Asymptote Journal, Aamer Hussein discusses three well-kept Italian secrets who aren’t Elena Ferrante. Pair with Cora Currier’s Millions essay on reading Italy through Ferrante’s books.
Dispatch from Italy
“Immaculate glass world of the spirit”
Recommended Reading: Anka Muhlstein on Stefan Zweig (whose work, you may have heard, inspired Wes Anderson’s latest film).
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A Matter of Time
Does literature have to be timeless? Over at Electric Literature, Kevin Pickard debates pop culture references in novels. Pair with Bill Morris’s Millions essay on books about the near future.
Mutual Self-Interest in Bad Decline
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, America needs George Saunders. Fortunately, the editors at The New Yorker’s Shouts and Murmurs blog appear to understand this.
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Indies Thriving in the Age of Amazon
“While pressure from Amazon forced Borders out of business in 2011, indie bookstores staged an unexpected comeback. Between 2009 and 2015, the ABA reported a 35% growth in the number of independent booksellers, from 1,651 stores to 2,227.” Professor Ryan Raffaelli read this surprising statistic and decided to study what exactly independent bookstores were doing in order to reinvent themselves and thrive. He found it has to do with indies embracing the three Cs; community, curation and convening. The full report will be released in 2018 but you can glimpse a preview here. Three cheers for indies!
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Their Thanksgiving(s)
“Behind the collective feast and public ritual lies a personal dimension: the holiday as each of us has lived it, laughed about it, imagined it or reinvented it.” For their “My Thanksgiving” feature, The New York Times asked nine writers — including Parul Sehgal, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Emma Cline — how they celebrate the holiday. Pair with Nguyen’s 2015 Year in Reading.