Out this week: Thomas Murphy by Roger Rosenblatt; The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome by Serge Brussolo; Weathering by Lucy Wood; Remains by Jesús Castillo; and What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell (which we reviewed). For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Rosenblatt; Brussolo; Wood; Castillo; Greenwell
“Aaliyah would have been on Twitter”
HTMLGIANT interviews Patricia Lockwood, Twitter’s “Poet Laureate“.
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Writing Is a Dangerous Pursuit
“We might not win. And yet we have to commit ourselves to the struggle, because there’s nothing else besides struggle.” Toni Morrison talks about literature and activism with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Sonia Sanchez.
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Why On Earth
“Why on earth would you start a literary magazine?” In an essay for The New Yorker Stephen Burt offers a wide variety of answers, from promoting a new genre to promoting one’s friends. His article pairs well with our own Nick Ripatrazone‘s lit mag question and answer: “What is the wider cultural influence of literary magazines? I am not sure there needs to be one.”
Explore the Real NW
Explore four of the spots mentioned in Zadie Smith’s NW courtesy of this interactive Penguin Press feature. Listen to Zadie’s own voice and read some of her prose as you explore the streets and buildings. You can also read the book’s first lines over here.
Ur Doing It Rong
“Skipping or skimming parts of a narrative should not only be expected but encouraged, particularly if an author is writing without clarity or purpose or showing off. Life’s too short to slog through some smarty-pants attempt to demonstrate a mastery of mechanical engineering or botany.” Adam Kirsch and Anna Holmes face off for The New York Times Bookends column about whether there are right and wrong ways to read a book.
Melville House withdraws from Amazon’s Best Translated Book Awards
Citing Amazon’s “predatory and thuggish practices,” Melville House has withdrawn from future participation in the Best Translated Book Awards.
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Strange and New
Last week, I pointed readers to an article about Michael Faber’s latest book and his decision to quit writing fiction. Now, in the Times Book Review, Marcel Theroux sizes up the novel, writing that “the reader is drawn through the book effortlessly, by the combination of incidental strangeness and the suspenseful handling of plot.”