The Guardian publishes an interview with my favorite indie bookstore, Harvard Book Store in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. Looking for book recommendations? Check out our Great Second-Half Preview.
Indie Reads
Touring The Third Hotel
“I thought quite a lot about the vocabulary of tourism, the kinds of desires that vocabulary seems designed to ignite, and the promises made, and how those promises change or vanish altogether depending on who you are.” The Paris Review interviews Laura van den Berg about writing, tourism, and her new novel, The Third Hotel. From our archives: our 2015 interview with van den Berg.
A Home at the End of the World
“I’m not paranoid, I’m really not.” The Washington Post has a profile of the so-called American Redoubt, an area of the Pacific Northwest populated by doomsday preppers. Pair with our own Emily St. John Mandel‘s reading list of five can’t-miss apocalyptic narratives.
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For Your Weekend
Slate offers up a treatise on “the greatness of gin.” (via my friend Derek, who wrote: “for your book blog; there is too little booze on it”)
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Introducing Stephen King
It seems slightly incredible that anyone doesn’t know who Stephen King is, but sometimes “it’s precisely those whom we imagine we know, in broad stereotypical terms, who require introductions,” as Joyce Carol Oates put it. Luckily, The Oyster Review has provided a handy reader’s guide to Stephen King, covering his works from Carrie to On Writing.
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So Tired Today
Recommended Reading: Year in Reading alumna Roxane Gay on the importance and exhaustion of continually bearing witness.