Out this week: A House Without Windows by Nadia Hashimi; Divorce Is in the Air by Gonzalo Torné; The Gentleman by Forrest Leo; Addlands by Tom Bullough; and Liberty Street by Dianne Warren. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Hashimi; Torné; Leo; Bullough; Warren
Instapoetry Month
We’re in the thick of National Poetry Month now, and Tweetspeak has a full round-up of ways to participate online. In particular, I think the Virginia Quarterly Review’s “Instapoem” series is especially rad. (Gee, I wonder why.)
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Blossoming Pity
Recommended Reading: Tabitha Blankenbiller responds to The New York Times' piece on Manly Book Clubs. “Reading the article yet again, my pity for this dude squad begins to blossom. To think that they will head into the ground without the words of Terry Tempest Williams or Lidia Yuknavitch or Sandra Cisneros in their hearts.” For a bit of humor about a manly book club, check out our rock ‘n’ roll book club.
The Humanity of Hobbits
Are hobbits human? Matthew Yglesias asks this question at Slate and mines J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to find out. The answer is yes; they are just shorter.
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“What’s today?”
Recommended Reading: James Galvin’s “Bet,” which was selected as The Missouri Review’s poem of the week.
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Amazon’s Backstory
Continuing its dabbling in content, Amazon has now collected its author interviews, essays, and other tidbits into one section called The Backstory.
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Not Your Father’s Canon
Electric Literature has launched the "Read More Women" series—a "stripped-down, feminist version" of the New York Times "By the Book" column—which will feature writers recommending books by women and non-binary authors. First up in the series is Maria Dahvana Headley, author of The Mere Wife.
Yes, Liberty Street by Dianne Warren. Readers of Brooklyn or Stoner or Alice Munro should seek out this terrific novel. The author is unknown here and the jacket is perfectly awful — pandering picture and ‘sexy’ font that literary readers would shun — but inside is a smart, surprising, and deeply moving story far more deserving than the fall’s overhyped stars.