Recommended Reading: “The Musical Vanity Boxes” by Lucia Berlin at Electric Literature.
Story from Lucia Berlin
Amazon’s Top Book Lists
Amazon has churned out a number of top books lists this year. We've already mentioned the Editors' Top 100 Books, but there's also the Customers' Top 100 Books, the Top 10 Literature and Fiction, the Top 10 Cookbooks, and the Top 10 Science Books.
Sad, Sad Puppies
The finalists for the 2016 Hugo Awards were announced a few days ago, and it looks like the reactionaries may have struck another blow. A group which calls itself "The Sad Puppies" has been stirring up political controversy at the Hugos for a few years now. Founded in 2013 by writer Larry Correia, who was highly critical of the Hugos for favoring what he believed were “academic” works that allegedly promote "left-leaning messages," the Puppies have since campaigned vigorously to have writers whose ideologies line up with their own make the final ballot.
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Writing For Your Life
"I think essay and memoir hang together in a balance. There’s any number of ways to strike it, but from Montaigne on down that balance seems key to their design." The Paris Review interviews the essayist Michelle Orange, author of the recent This Is Running For Your Life.
Joyce Carol Oates Explains
Our review of A Widow's Story took Joyce Carol Oates to task for not mentioning that she had remarried not long after the death of her husband. In the New York Review of Books, Julian Barnes recently made the same point. Responding to the Barnes review, Oates defended her choice, but diplomatically added, "In retrospect I can see that I should have added something like an appendix."
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Huck Finn, Improved
Cartoonist Ruben Bolling has identified some additional ways in which Huck Finn might be cleaned up for today's delicate readers.
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A Bit Rusty
Most of our discussions about changing the canon revolve around adding onetime marginalized writers. But there’s a flipside to this -- who do we need to eject? In a Bookends column for the Times, James Parker and Francine Prose pick greats that are no longer great.
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