Year in Reading alum Rumaan Alam reflects at The Literary Hub about the labels we ascribe to texts. Pair with his recent interview with Lindsay Hatton.
What is a diverse book?
Dystopian (Non)Fictions
Alexandra Alter traces how “a bleak, apocalyptic strain of post-revolutionary literature has taken root” in the Middle East following the Arab Spring.
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Fail Music
Novels written by accomplished writers about failed artists are nothing new. What is new is seeing a once-successful novel about a failed artist -- one that’s been out-of-print for twenty years -- get a burst of renewed attention.
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Familiar Choices
At NPR’s blog, Meg Wolitzer chooses five summer books that deserve more attention from readers. If you’re a Millions regular, though, you may find her selections a wee bit familiar, seeing as we reviewed Jessica Soffer’s book, interviewed This Is Running For Your Life author Michelle Orange and published The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards author Kristopher Jansma.
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David Foster Wallace In Brief
"Wallace’s fiction contains enormous cruelty... But it is also a deeply moral body of work. Its difficulties, and many of its cruelties, exist for specific reasons. Whether Wallace’s fraught projects are successes or failures is up to the individual, but these are judgments that all serious readers should want to make for themselves." Chris Power considers David Foster Wallace's short stories in an essay for The Guardian and argues that after Infinite Jest they just might be the most important work he produced.