“I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices?” New short fiction from Ted Chiang over at Electric Literature (and introduced by Year in Reading alum Karen Jay Fowler)! Pair with our encyclopedic survey of primate lit.
The Great Silence
New Novel, New Excerpt
Darcey Steinke has a new novel, Sister Golden Hair, coming out this fall, and Granta has an excerpt available online. For more about Steinke, be sure to read Lydia Millet‘s praise for her early novel, Jesus Saves.
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A secret room in a library in India
The Times of India reports on an eerie library mystery: renovations to the 250-year-old National Library in Kolkata have revealed a secret chamber. The sealed 1000 square foot enclosure on the first floor has no windows, trapdoors, or openings of any kind.
This is your brain on metaphor
Annie Murphy Paul looks to neuroscience to understand the pleasure of the written word.
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Tuesday New Release Day
On shelves this week are Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey, The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall, and a provocative new book by Philip Pullman, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.
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A Critic Turned Novelist
“Sometimes I think I’ve lost my nerve a little bit. I think it’s growing older, and a certain reservoir of anger literally runs out.” The Guardian interviews James Wood, author and book critic at The New Yorker, about his craft, his forthcoming novel Upstate, and the landscape of today’s literary criticism. Pair with: an essay about the greatness (and great influence) of Wood on a fellow novelist.
The Reindeer Uprising
“There was an inefficient system in place, and what I did was subvert it by an external rotation of reluctant holly jollies. Nasally, I came to understand that light is a thing that is produced through the collision of particulates, and boy isn’t that the truth.” As part of their year-end review, McSweeney’s republished their ten most popular pieces of 2014, including the above. Its title? “Donald Barthelme Narrates the Progress of the Reindeer.”
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Neil Gaiman Lane
The Ocean at the End of the Lane is now an actual lane. Neil Gaiman’s hometown, Portsmouth, England, named a bus lane after his novel last Sunday. Sadly, the magical Hempstock family doesn’t live at the end of it.