Yesterday, Searching for John Hughes author Jason Diamond kicked off this year’s Tournament of Books by judging the “play-in round.” Today, our own Kirstin Butler is deliberating between The Underground Railroad and Black Wave.
The Tournament of Books is Underway!
“Tough, Funny, and Sophisticated”
Sam Sacks of Open Letters Monthly offers an encomium to Pauline Kael, “one of the best movie critics – or critics of any kind – of the past century.”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Max, Evison, Levithan
New this week is D.T. Max’s biography Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, which we excerpted last week. Also out are The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison and Every Day by David Levithan.
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Kafka’s Dogs
Recommended Reading: On the subject of dogs in Kafka’s works at Queen Mob’s Teahouse. Our own Matt Seidel rereads The Metamorphosis in different places, letting his setting shape the reading of the text.
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“In the future, you’ll be so lightheaded”
Recommended Reading: this collection of short pieces by Rumpus readers on the subject of magic.
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The Chekhovian Rules of Writing
Anton Chekhov's rules for writing, as seen in an 1886 letter to his brother, include "total objectivity," "extreme brevity," and, of course, "compassion."
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