Out this week: Alice & Oliver by Charles Bock; Our Young Man by Edmund White; Now and Again by Charlotte Rogan; Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings by Stephen O’Connor; and The Bricks That Built the Houses by Kate Tempest. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Bock; White; Rogan; O’Connor; Tempest
But just maybe you’ll beat the odds
If you find yourself in a sporting mood, you can place a bet on who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I personally like Alice Munro’s 20/1 odds for taking the award, though Haruki Murakami’s 10/1 make him the safer bet.
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First Dads
“What does each president’s fitness for parenthood reveal about his fitness to run our country?” Daniel Jones reviews First Dads by Joshua Kendall, which takes an inside look at the fathers of our nation. You could also check out our own Janet Potter’s project to read a biography of every sitting president.
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Lorrie Commodore
Lorrie Moore is headed to Nashville, Tennessee as Vanderbilt University’s new Gertrude Conaway Professor of English. That sound you just heard is the excited shriek of every Commodore English major yelling out in ecstasy.
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How Should Books Be Organized?
Reading books is great; buying books is better. But how should they be organized? NPR, under the guidance of librarian Kee Malesky, has some pointers.
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How to Write Like a Man
“She can write like a man, they said, by which they meant, She can write.” Claire Vaye Watkins writes for Tin House about the problem that has no name. Also check out this Millions piece on sexism in the age of the internet.
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An Interview with Justin Taylor
Writers who know literature: Bookslut’s Mark Doten talks Kierkegaard, Derrida, Bataille, Sinclair and Faulkner with Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever author Justin Taylor.
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I Heart Antosha Chekhonte
This summer Antosha Chekhonte’s (aka Anton Chekhov‘s) first book The Prank will finally be published after more than 130 years of waiting, and it’s been described as “frankly indispensable for readers of Chekhov, or Russian literature, or comedic literature, or parody, or any and all literature” generally. Pair with our own Sonya Chung‘s essay, “I Heart Chekhov.”
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