Out this week: My Lost Poets by Philip Levine; Orphans of the Carnival by Carol Birch; These Are the Names by Tommy Wieringa; A Poet’s Dublin by Eavan Boland; and Against Sunset by Stanley Plumly. For more on these and other new titles, go read our latest fiction and nonfiction book previews.
Tuesday New Release Day: Levine; Birch; Wieringa; Boland; Plumly
Bourne Speaks Aussie
The Australian Broadcasting Company’s radio program, The Book Show, invited Millions staff writer Michael Bourne to speak on the book app for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. To read Bourne’s Millions piece on the Kerouac book app, click here.
The Hype Cycle
Elif Batuman entertainingly muses on “hype” and resolves to “write five 5-star Amazon reviews this month of books I love by living authors.”
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And Hobbes Appears Where, Exactly?
At HTML Giant, Mike Kleine writes a 25-point review of The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. If you need a refresher, you might want to check out our rundown of tiger-based literature.
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Hey Dr. Sandman
“During various periods of my life I have succumbed to the siren call of sleeping pills. It is hard to resist their promise: one tablet, and your night will be purged. Your brain may be in overdrive, its receptors working away, hungrily awaiting more images and information, but like a computer it is forced into another mode. Yet the little white disks with a dent down the middle are no panacea; whenever I take one of these thought guillotines I feel trapped in a grey zone, seesawing between mid and shallow slumber, mind and body dulled but not of their own accord.” A lifelong insomniac recounts her long struggle with the illness.
Literary Street Art
Emily Smith discusses the place of zines in contemporary American politics, over at Ploughshares. As she puts it, “Zines, like street art, are allowed critical power through anonymity—a function newsstand periodicals simply can’t perform for the sake of reputation or the sacrifice of advertisers. In this way, zines are small-scale democracies.”
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The Benefits of Reading
Infographic of the Week: The Benefits of Reading presented by the National Reading Campaign at Electric Literature. Carolyn Ross, a New Jersey high school teacher, discusses how to make reading more enjoyable for students.
Tuesday New Release Day
Nemesis, the latest from Philip Roth is now out. Other new fiction this week includes Nicole Krauss’ Great House and Myla Goldberg’s The False Friend. In non-fiction, Steven Johnson takes on a thought-provoking topic with Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. Also new are Ron Chernow’s massive biography of George Washington and a new book from Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
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