New this week: A Hundred Thousand Words by Bob Proehl; Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner; The Sun in Your Eyes by Deborah Shapiro; The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam; The Swan Book by Alexis Wright; The Life of the World to Come by Dan Cluchey; and Mortal Trash by Kim Addonizio. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Proehl; Steiner; Shapiro; Anam; Wright; Cluchey; Addonizio
“Like church bells rung by wild sugar high children”
“Perhaps it’s a sign that our literary culture is not quite so ailing that Smith managed to make a space for NW, to clear a third path, one that meanders through Willesden, through time, and through the mind.” Our own Emily M. Keeler on realism and Zadie Smith.
Skirmishing With the Eminati
Look out, Darwin — Wolfe’s coming for you. Tom Wolfe’s new book, The Kingdom of Speech, which we reviewed a couple of days ago, takes aim at Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky: “Like an industrial engineer who also makes bespoke dueling pistols in his shed on the weekends, Mr. Wolfe has made a side career of skirmishing with the eminati (his term) in an array of cultural fields. If fighting enlivens one’s mornings, Mr. Wolfe has had little need of caffeine.”
Babies Don’t Like Snakes
The Greek gods and goddesses were nothing if not self-serving. From Mallory Ortberg over at The Toast, here is an introduction to Dirtbag Hera. Don’t you worry, Dirtbag Athena got her comeuppance, too.
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The Future of Print
Here’s a lovely little documentary collecting interviews with various people of the book. Stephen Fowler, of The Moneky’s Paw antiquarian book shop, makes an appearance, though his remarks seem slightly less macabre in HD than those he gave to Kyo Maclear back in March. Joanne Saul, proprietor of Type Books (you know it from that stop motion video that lit up the bookternet a while back) also makes an appearance.
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Keys Under the Basket
“Mr. Fogg assured us he would touch down at our place at precisely 8:45 in the evening. Imagine our delight when he not only arrived with all the punctuality befitting an Englishman, but also quite literally touched down! In a hot air balloon!” Introducing literary couchsurfing.
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The New York Review of Money
Recommended Reading: All of the New York Times Book Review’s “Money” issue is worth a look, but in particular I recommend checking out Chris Ware’s original graphic short story. (Bonus: the Building Stories author recently contributed to our Year In Reading series.)
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