Rosie Schaap espouses the joys of cooking for others “in a powerfully fraught, anxious time” such as ours. “I wanted, at least in this small way,” she writes, “to give comfort—both to myself and to my loved ones.” And as our own Hannah Gersen has noted, if you’re fortunate to have such a good friend for a chef, you can read a cookbook while they work.
The Joy of Cooking for Others
Extremely Patient and Incredibly Careful
It looks like Jonathan Safran Foer will be publishing his first novel in eleven years next fall. The book, tentatively titled Here I Am, is the story of an American Jewish family, set against a background of traumatic events in the Middle East including earthquakes and an invasion of Israel. Foer’s last novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, enjoyed tremendous critical and commercial success. Here’s a piece on JSF’s crazy, confusing, die-cut book Tree of Codes.
David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello Talk Hip-Hop
The book David Foster Wallace co-authored with Mark Costello about the pair’s “uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for a certain music called rap/hip-hop” will be re-released in the US next Tuesday. UK readers look like they’re going to get a reissue of the book on their shelves as well.
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Commitments
“In the morning, before we left, we presented my aunt with a gift from Indonesia, a package of luwak, one of four in Bon’s duffel. Civet coffee? she said, bemused. We were already savoring cups of coffee at her table, brewed in her coffee press from Arabica beans of her own supply.” An excerpt from Year in Reading alumnus Viet Thanh Nguyen’s forthcoming novel appears in the new issue of Ploughshares.
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Burrito Lit: A Review
We know the internet’s been full of buzz following the announcement of Chipotle’s new burrito lit, but the Los Angeles Review of Books’ “Review of Cups” by Maria Bustillos has us laughing. After all, there’s nothing like a timely and slightly irreverent review to legitimize a new genre. And for more fun with reviews, be sure to check out The Millions’ own “Worst Book Review Ever.”