Is your to-be-read list a little daunting? Check out some tips from BBC on how to read faster. If you’re looking for reading suggestions, check out our fiction and non-fiction previews.
Speed Reading
Authors on Trump
A formidable group of authors, including Year in Reading alum Joyce Carol Oates, Steven Pinker, and Rich Benjamin, comment on Donald Trump’s rise to power. You could also consider this literary cage match between Trump, Faulkner, and Hemingway.
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The Perils of Litchat
“Like all great literature, [David Foster Wallace’s] books do many things at once. Litchat, however, is singleminded.” Laura Miller discusses “the perils of litchat” at The New Yorker and how it has affected the legacy of David Foster Wallace. For less litchat, read our review of The David Foster Wallace Reader.
“Writers all need Vera.”
Does a writer need a devoted spouse to be prolific? At The Atlantic, Koa Beck examines the concept of having a do-it-all partner like Vera Nabokov and if this traditional gender role only harms female writers. Koa interviews various writers, from Emma Straub to Ayelet Waldman, on how their literary partnerships work. “I’d fantasized that being his Vera was a way for me to deal with being stuck as a stay-at-home mom—I’d subsume my own ambitions into something ‘greater!’ But that lasted about 48 hours,” Waldman said.
Kurkov’s Penguins
Anthony Olcott takes a look at the crime fiction — and penguins — of Andrey Kurkov.
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A Shortlister in Our Midst
Big congratulations to Millions staffer Emily St. John Mandel, whose novel The Singer’s Gun was shortlisted for the Indie Booksellers Choice Award!
Michael Bourne’s ‘The Old Home Place’ Published by Straylight
The novella The Old Home Place by longtime Millions staffer Michael Bourne offers an intimate look at an ambitious young couple, in love and in trouble, as they grapple with America’s complex racial history.
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