“It would be hard for anybody who has dealt with suicide to not have a heightened awareness of things, to perhaps be a little more cautious about things.” A Colorado school district has officially pulled the book 13 Reasons Why out of circulation, reports The New York Post; not surprisingly, some librarians are rankled. Pair with this case against book banning, which focuses on number 15 on the list of 100 most challenged books released by the ALA, Toni Morrison‘s The Bluest Eye.
13 Reasons Why Not
Franzen and Oprah: Together at Last?
If Moby Lives is right, the literary beef that erupted when Oprah selected Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections for her book club and he rejected the (in his mind, dubious) honor is about to get a curious denouement. Speculation is that Freedom is poised to become another Oprah selection. And your author suspects that Franzen will be more welcoming this time around. (Oprah sticker haters should probably buy their copies of Freedom now, just to be safe.) Update: The AP confirms and so it begins again.
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The legends and the largely forgotten
The National Book Foundation has an online exhibit of the runners up for the award since its inception in 1950. That's a lot of titles, so you might like to let John Williams be your guide.
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Epic Fail In the Wall Street Journal
“Mr. [Mark] O'Connell is an intelligent and very funny writer,” says Barton Swaim in The Wall Street Journal. “But Epic Fail will also prompt you to consider how shallow—and ugly—humans can be.” (Bonus: a reference to getting pitted, just so pitted.)
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Oh Doctor
Recommended Reading: Frances Stonor Saunders on Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago.
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Penkov Takes the BBC ISS Award
East of the West author Miroslav Penkov is sitting pretty these days. The Bulgarian fiction writer recently nabbed the BBC International Short Story Award for his collection’s titular story, “East of the West.” With a purse of £15,000, this is the world’s biggest prize for short stories, though typically it considers work by British authors only. However this year, due to the 2012 Olympics, the field was expanded to include international writers. All five judges unanimously picked Penkov’s work over the nine other submissions. You can read an excerpt online courtesy of Google Books, and you can get a little more acquainted with Penkov’s themes on Picador’s Tumblr.
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