Hosted by the Library of Congress, this year’s National Book Festival will take place on Saturday, September 2, in Washington D.C. and include authors such as David McCullough and Diana Gabaldon. Should you be interested in volunteering, click here to fill out a Google submission form or email Faye Levin, the 2017 volunteer coordinator, at [email protected] And let us know if you’re going!
The LOC wants YOU
Tonight’s the Night!
Millions readers in New York: Please join us tonight at McNally Jackson bookstore in Manhattan to celebrate the release of The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books. I’ll be joined by my co-editor Jeff Martin, as well as Reif Larsen and some of the book’s other contributors, including Millions staff writers Garth Risk Hallberg and Emily St. John Mandel. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!
Insert Your Own “Judging” Joke Here
This list of the year’s best book covers — chosen by the staff of Design Observer — pairs nicely with our own comparison of book covers from the US and UK.
This Isn’t Your Mother’s DoubleX
The debut issue of Candor magazine is like a Sassy for the intellectual set, rife with wit (Emily Gould and Merisa Meltzer discuss Away We Go), intelligence (writer mother Rachel Zucker and woman writer Sarah Manguso speak candidly about identity, motherhood, women’s prejudices and writing), and women’s rights (Atossa Abrahamian considers the rhetoric of the rape victim).
Celebrating van Gogh
Celebrate van Gogh’s birthday (March 30, 1853) with this post from Brain Pickings on the artist’s meditations on the human pursuit of greatness.
Holy Order in Remote Places
The last book that Genevieve Hudson for The Rumpus loved was James Salter’s classic of mountaineering, Solo Faces. Here’s an essay from The Millions on why Salter was one of the best at writing sex.
Talking to Ourselves
“Like walkie-talkies that require a button be pressed to speak and released to hear, does reading require that either the voice of the author or the voice of the reader’s consciousness be silenced at any given moment? Such an analogy suggests that reading is an act of hospitality toward another’s mind, in which we silence our voice in courtesy to the voice of another’s consciousness, a voice that alternates with our own in conversation.” John Biguenet on silent reading.