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
On Craft and Color
“[A]ny discussion of craft does not take place in a vacuum – that race is part of one’s lived experience and how we see ourselves and are seen does impact how and what we write.” Poet Neil Aiken puts together an absolutely indispensable list of texts – books, essays, lectures and beyond – on the craft of writing by writers of color. See also: our own Edan Lepucki‘s impromptu syllabus of craft readings.
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(Don’t) Judge a Book by Its Cover
Dan Piepenbring writes at The Paris Review on judging a book by its cover in the Weimar Republic and the sheer mastery of some of the early twentieth-century German cover designers. Two related pieces from The Millions: our own Bill Morris on the pleasures of the typewritten book cover and Matt Allard on reimagining some popular cover art.
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We’re Just Kids
Practically everyone with a pulse loves Patti Smith. Celebrate Sunday by listening to her speak about Virginia Woolf’s cane, Charles Dickens’s pen, and a few other literary talismans. Here’s a handy Spotify playlist which gathers every song from Smith’s award-winning memoir Just Kids.
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Tuesday is New Release Time
A good week for new releases: John McPhee’s new, more personal collection of essays, Silk Parachute, Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask, and, of course, our own Sonya Chung’s debut Long for This World. All three of these books were on our “Most Anticipated” list for 2010. New in paperback today is Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn.
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The Art of Encouragement
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