Out this week: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz; Sun in Days by Meghan O’Rourke; The Good People by Hannah Kent; The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs by Janet Peery; and The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Newitz; O’Rourke; Kent; Peery; McDermott
Becoming What You Write
Recommended Reading: A conversation between Year in Reading alumna Rebecca Makkai and Louise Erdrich at The Chicago Review of Books. You could also read our interview with Makkai following the release of The Hundred-Year House.
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New Helen DeWitt
Millions fave Helen DeWitt’s new novel Lightning Rods now has a cover and is available for pre-order. Look for it in October.
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How to Throw the Best Book Events
A new “book event crowdfunding platform” currently launched in beta, and it goes by the name of Togather. To get the party started, they interviewed Tumblr guru, Year in Reading alumna and all-around publishing maven Rachel Fershleiser about what it takes to throw a good book event.
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Alex Karras Remembered
Bill Morris, clearly maneuvering for the title of Motor City Poet Laureate, follows up his piece on Detroit’s comeback with a vivid account of Lion legend Alex Karras. “Karras will always be a pink giant with a towel wrapped around his waist,” Morris writes.
If I Were a Boy
“I like a lot of things about being a woman, but there are times and ways it’s a prison, and sometimes I daydream about being out of that prison.” The Guardian has a crack Rebecca Solnit essay about clothing, gender, and of course, mansplaining. Pair with our review of Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby.
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Infographic: Shakespeare, Murder, and Pies
This week in book-related infographics: a look at the deaths and murders in Shakespeare‘s works. Our favorite illustration? The pies that once were Chiron and Demetrius (from Titus Andronicus).
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This Post Reads Like Mad Libs.
Roz Chast, whose cartoons have been mainstays in the New Yorker for quite some time, has teamed up with Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields to write a book about the 101 two-letter words allowed in Scrabble.
UC Police Barbarity
This week, UC Davis students protesting a tuition increase (among other things) were mercilessly pepper sprayed by their own campus police. In response, Nathan Brown, a non-tenured associate professor of English, has spoken out and called for UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi‘s resignation. In solidarity with Brown’s demand, students silently gathered around Katehi’s office as she exited. For those hoping for further illumination on the entire fiasco, I recommend this list of “Ten Things You Should Know About Friday’s UC Davis Police Violence.” Elsewhere within the UC system, former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass details his harrowing experience at the UC Berkeley protests.
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