Believe it or not, Fifty Shades of Grey was still the bestselling book of 2015. For a fascinating, in-depth look at what sold and what didn’t, head over to The Guardian. The disconnect between the retail top ten and the myriad year-end lists alone is worth the look.
Fifty Shades Again
“All dialogue? Really?”
Seeing as the latest Dave Eggers book consists of all dialogue, it’s a good time to look back on the history of all-dialogue novels. Alexander Kalamaroff, writing for The Rumpus, identifies a few examples, among them The Waves by Virginia Woolf and numerous works in Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme.
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Chilling out is good for society.
Over in the New Statesmen, Ed Smith makes the case for increasing your productivity by making sure to get your R&R. He mentions Bertrand Russel's In Praise of Idleness, which is my go to piece for arguing with myself against being too busy to argue with myself. Or would be, if only I could find the time.
Me and Myself
What is the personal essay, and where could it go from here? In The Boston Review, Merve Emre traces two paths.
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The Readability Myth
Is readability a myth? In an article for The Atlantic Noah Berlatsky argues that there are no "easy" or "difficult" books, or rather that these are relative terms - a book that gives one person fits may be light reading for someone else. His argument pairs interestingly with our own Emily Colette Wilkinson's "Difficult Books" series.
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The Common in the City Party
Tonight! Celebrate 3 years with The Common. You can still buy tickets to this elegant lit party here. André Aciman reads from his latest novel Harvard Square.
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