In his 2015 Year in Reading, Garth Risk Hallberg told us about Max Porter’s Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, a quasi-poem/novel/memoir which “you will quickly forget is weird as hell, because it is also beautiful as hell, moving as hell, and funny as hell.” Though the book isn’t slated for stateside release for another few months, there is a fantastic review over at the London Review of Books that’s well worth the read.
Grief Is The Thing
The Secret Space of Diaries
For the New Yorker, Morgan Jerkins reviews Helen Oyeyemi’s What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours and considers what keeping a diary means for “a black woman in a white world.”
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Copyeditors Required
“On Thursday, an uncorrected proof of her debut novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with the writer’s name was misspelled as “JA Rowling”, became the muddled copy to fetch four figures at auction.” The Guardian presents a survey of famous literary typos and malapropisms. See also our own Edan Lepucki‘s interview with her beloved copyeditor Susan Bradanini Betz.
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The Art of the Essay
What makes an essay literary? Over at the Kenyon Review, the editors explore language as an end in itself. Also check out H.S. Cross’s Millions essay on writing what you don’t know.
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The Myth of the Recluse
Nathan Bransford points out that nobody is “just an author.” Even Thomas Pynchon promotes himself.
Library in the Cloud
Amazon has unveiled its Kindle Lending Library. Prime subscribers can now “choose from thousands of books to borrow for free including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers – as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates.”
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Coming Soon: The Future
Lapham’s Quarterly‘s Food issue was a big hit, but their upcoming Future issue looks promising as well.
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