Stick ’em up, partner! In a confusing marriage of literature and implicit violence, a bookstore in Austin, Texas is offering a ten percent discount to any customers openly carrying a handgun in their establishment.
Gun Fight at the O.K. Bookstore
From Whence the Twain?
What inspired Samuel Clemens to change his name to Mark Twain? Was it a Mississippi riverboat captain? Did he earn it by “drinking at a one-bit saloon in Virginia City, Nevada?” Or, as rare book dealer Kevin Mac Donnell now alleges in the new issue of Mark Twain Journal, did the author find his pseudonym in a popular humor journal?
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Scottish Book Sculptures
Someone’s been leaving book sculptures in Scottish libraries. They’re exquisite.
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The Formative Years
Over at the Literary Hub, twelve writers reflect on the high school English teachers who changed their lives. Also check out Nick Ripatrazone’s piece of advice for English teachers.
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Ghosts of the Tsunami
People Who Eat Darkness author Richard Lloyd Parry’s forthcoming book on the Tōhoku earthquake and its aftermath, Ghosts of the Tsunami, will be released some time in late summer/early fall, and BBC Radio put together a 30-minute teaser to tide you over until then. You can also check out Parry’s moving yet unsettling piece for the London Review of Books.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Frame, London, Stafford, Tennyson, Bennet
Janet Frame’s posthumous novel In the Memorial Room is out this week, as is a new e-book edition of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf. Also out: Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems by the onetime Poet Laureate William Stafford; a new biography of Alfred, Lord Tennyson; and the latest edition of The Best American Magazine Writing.
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Adam Novy Interview
Adam Novy, author of The Avian Gospels, is interviewed by Brad Listi for Other People. Their conversation topics include Chicago, Jewishness, Medusa, and “the fear of getting squashed by the universe.”
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This Land Press
This Land Press, which launched in 2010 as a project to “bring literary journalism to Middle America,” will suspend publication of its magazine this spring, and there are no immediate plans for future publication.
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