During the riots in Baltimore following Freddie Gray’s death, the city’s chief librarian insisted her neighborhood branch remain open. Yesterday that librarian, Dr. Carla D. Hayden, was sworn in as the 14th librarian of Congress, the first woman and African-American to hold the position. We wonder what Dr. Hayden might make of our own Jacob Lambert‘s “Open Letter to the Person Who Wiped Boogers on My Library Book.”
Hail to the Chief (Librarian)
The Kindle World
Apropos of Mark O'Connell's contemplation of the Kindle is this piece by The Guardian's Sam Leith on what to expect if the Kindle truly does supplant the printed book.
Introducing the Vagazzled Vajayjay
In an interview about her new book, The Day I Shot Cupid: Hello, My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt and I'm a Love-aholic, Jennifer Love had some rather startling advice for jilted young ladies: "After a breakup, a friend of mine Swarovski-crystalled my precious lady. It shined like a disco ball so I have a whole chapter in there on how women should vagazzle their vajayjays."
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Quiet Creature
"João Gilberto Noll frustrates attempts to foresee the plot or to craft stories as they are traditionally understood and written. The series of events that appear in them are as tenuously linked into a broader narrative as those of a dream." An interview with Noll translator Adam Morris.
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Lacework
“The plot, obviously, is kind of difficult to explain, like an earnest, pared-down, hipster Foucault’s Pendulum. Not only are all of the plot turns above laid out through a multiframed narrative, replete with several people’s footnotes, but the events are interwoven with disquisitions on the history of map-making, Situationist philosophy, urban planning, and pop music.” At Slate, our own Lydia Kiesling reads Catie Disabato’s The Ghost Network. (ICYMI, Dan Lopez reviewed the book for The Millions.)
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He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Elected
J.K. Rowling says Donald Trump is worse than Voldemort. The Harry Potter author has come out against the presidential hopeful, tweeting that “Voldemort was nowhere near as bad.” Yes, she even said his name.
Slantwise
There's been a lot of talk recently about the possibilities for contemporary war literature, especially in light of the success of Phil Klay's Redeployment. Now Flavorwire considers "a crop of fiction that approaches the question of American intelligence, torture, and military intervention slantwise," particularly Mark Doten’s The Infernal, which was included in our 2015 Book Preview.
Better Book Reviews
Darryl Campbell has had enough of the clichés abundant in book reviews so he's devised some alternatives. "If fine artists aren't your thing," Campbell writes, "then maybe American presidents might be a better comparison: 'Taft-like excess,' 'Cleveland-esque genre-bending' or 'Clintonian eroticism'."