“Lovecraft Country doesn’t just race along, it tears, demanding that you keep turning its pages without interruption. I read the second half of the book while walking in my neighborhood, holding the book with one hand and clutching bags of groceries in the other, and then finishing up in bed with a small LED lamp after my wife had fallen asleep. It’s one of those books.” Cory Doctorow reviews Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country at BoingBoing.
Entering Lovecraft Country
Gaze Turned Inward
Many if not most painters attempt self-portraits at some point, but how many of them paint self-portraits exclusively? At The Morning News, a gallery of self-portrait maven Haley Hasler’s work.
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Two Good Women
Want to see Nobel laureate Alice Munro in conversation with Margaret Atwood? The two will take part in a Google+ hangout on Wednesday night at 7:30. (You could also read our beginner’s guide to Munro’s work.)
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Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness
Who’s the official Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness Officer at your place of work? You mean you don’t have one? Well, get on that promptly. The Center for Disease Control advises that “If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack,” so you might as well kill five birds with one stone.
Goodbye to King of the Blurbs
Recently, it seemed hard to find a book not blurbed by Gary Shteyngart. He did blurb 150 books in the past decade. Yet now the author has decided to mostly retire from blurbing, he announced in The New Yorker. “Literature can and will go on without my mass blurbing. Perhaps it may even improve.” Pair with: Our own Bill Morris’s essay on whether or not to blurb.
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Readers Pick Favorite Indie Books
More from The Huffington Post’s series on independent books: Readers’ Favorites From Indie Publishers.
Five-Million-Alarm Fires
Perhaps inspired by the news, first reported a few years ago, that mad scientists in the Indian army plan to weaponize superhot chilis, Lauren Collins ventures bravely into the world of extreme heat. As a warning to readers who fancy themselves tough, she quotes a doctor who makes clear that these peppers aren’t just hot — they’re lethal.
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