“Tsundoku: the acquiring of reading materials followed by letting them pile up and subsequently never reading them.” Do you buy books and let them languish? According to Ozy, there’s a Japanese word for that. Might we encourage your tsundoku habit by encouraging you to look at this list of our favorite October releases?
Did You Say Sudoku
Grief and Memory
Humans have been covering paintings, windows, and mirrors after the passing of loved ones for generations. Why do we feel the need to close off our connection to the outside world when we are grieving? Colin Dickey writes about the social, literary, and religious connotations of grief and memory at Hazlitt. At The Millions, Lidia Yuknavitch writes about channeling her grief into art.
Cobbling Together
We tend to assume that life stories, in mentally healthy people, are concrete things, assembled from events that are hard to twist or distort. Yet all of us shape our own stories in ways we can’t always see. At The Atlantic, Julie Beck explores the idea that life stories, as we construct them, form integral parts of our personalities.
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#1000BlackGirlBooks
If you haven’t heard about Marley Dias, you have now. She has launched the #1000BlackGirlBooks book drive to collect one thousand books with black girls as the protagonists, which will be donated to a library in St. Mary, Jamaica. Did I mention that she’s eleven years old?
Two New Leslie Jamison Books on the Way
Leslie Jamison, whose collection Empathy Exams was widely praised on The Millions, has earned a two-book “mega” deal with Little, Brown. The new deal promises to deliver another essay collection entitled Ghost Essays, as well as a work of “narrative nonfiction” entitled Archive Lush. (Bonus: We interviewed Jamison for the site last May.)
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Never Comfortable
Recommended Viewing: On the improbable triumph of a young black lesbian poet and the efficacy of mentorship.
Bold and Messy
Over at Full Stop, Josephine Livingstone writes about Eileen Myles’s hip image and the renewed success of Chelsea Girls. Also check out Stephanie LaCava’s Millions essay on how social media helped to push Myles’s book into the mainstream.
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