“[W]e are and we are not who our blood roots predetermine us to be.” Over at Electric Literature, Sion Dayson talks with our own Sonya Chung about race, writing, and her new novel, The Loved Ones, which is one of the books we’re most excited to read this month.
Blood Roots
Nabokov Speech Published in English for the First Time
In 1925 Nabokov delivered a colorful talk on boxing to a circle of Russian émigrés living in Berlin. Yesterday, that pugnacious passage was published for the first time in English.
Pig Tales
“I move in a desultory society and often a week or two will roll by without my going to anybody’s house to dinner or anyone’s coming to mine, but when an occasion does arise, and I am summoned, something usually turns up (an hour or two in advance) to make all human intercourse seem vastly inappropriate.” In the new issue of The Atlantic Weekly (not to be confused with the Monthly), a reprint of a classic E.B. White essay.
The Relevance of Plasma
The vigilant excavators at Longform have dug up a fairly old piece, written by the essayist Jo Ann Beard, on a time in her life taken up by cagey dogs, vanishing husbands and the plasma in Saturn’s rings.
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Smile More
Recommended (Frustrating) Reading: “Men Explain Submissions To Me,” an eye-opening new piece from Sarah Blake at The Rumpus.
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Seeking Comfort in the Bittersweet
Molly Templeton dissects what exactly makes up a comfort read, noting that it's not always the books with feel-good endings that we return to the most.
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Marlon James’s Dark Star Trilogy
A Brief History of Seven Killings author Marlon James was struck by the whiteness of The Hobbit, and in an interview for Entertainment Weekly, he explains it inspired him to write his own fantasy series based on African epic traditions. “It’s sort of like my being a scholar of African history and mythology, and my being a total sci-fi/fantasy geek who rereads things like The Mists of Avalon, they just sort of came together,” James said. He’s targeting a Fall 2018 release for the first book.
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Borders Leftovers
At The Daily Beast, our own Bill Morris goes to a Borders store closing due to bankruptcy to see what remains once all the good books have been picked clean.
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