Out this week: Marlena by Julie Buntin; American War by Omar El Akkad; What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah; Kingdom of the Young by Edie Meidav; No One Is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts; and Living in the Weather of the World by Richard Bausch. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Buntin; El Akkad; Arimah; Meidav; Watts; Bausch
Trouble with Names
When your first name is interesting or just plain weird, you learn how not to get sick of explaining what your parents were thinking. Fortunately for Brevity editor Dinty Moore, his name is “more a gift than a burden.”
Traveling like Twain
The Mississippi was integral to Mark Twain’s fiction, so David Carkeet traced Twain’s path on the river in the new issue of Smithsonian. “What would Samuel Clemens have made of the Riverwalk? He was a grown child who readily took a God’s-eye view of life on earth. He would have loved it.” Pair with: Our essay on Twain’s travel writing.
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Calm Before the Storm
Huzzah! 336 issues of the avant-garde magazine The Storm (1910-1932) have just been digitized and are available for download. Some notable contributors to The Storm included Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and many others.
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A Literary Conspiracy
Gaddis, Pynchon, “Wanda Tinasky”: Jenny Hendrix looks at a real-life literary conspiracy of mistaken identity upon the re-release of “Jack Green’s” Fire the Bastards.
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We Can Get Behind This
We would be remiss not to mention this new ‘Fifty Shades of Muppet’ trailer. Pair with our own essay on literary predecessors in published fan fiction.
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“To me, Godspeed is more than just a band, it’s an idea.”
Canadian post-rock outfit Godspeed You! Black Emperor will soon release their fourth studio album, ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!, and it’s definitely worth checking out. You can stream the record over here. The band was also recently interviewed for The Guardian, too, and this entire post should keep you occupied for a while.
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Fug Life
For those who like their celebrity fashion with a voluptuous lashing of satire, this Fug’s for you. Check out the maybe-not-so-pretty fashion blog Go Fug Yourself‘s Grammy Awards coverage–or lack of coverage, as was (quelle suprise!) the case with Britney Spears.
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