“[T]aken as a whole, the shortlist from which this year’s judges choose their winner tomorrow night is just more evidence of the continued neo-colonial cultural dominance of the UK and the US – the institutions, the power, the money, the contacts.” How to win the Man Booker? According to the numbers, move to London or New York. In case you feel like placing bets anyway, here’s this year’s shortlist.
Place Yer Man Booker Bets
Guess Who’s Coming to the Awards Dinner?
Percival Everett wins the Believer Book Award, for I Am Not Sidney Poitier: “a wickedly funny, stunningly imaginative, and wholly original book that addresses, head-on, sex, racism, religion, and wealth in America.”
●
●
Riverhead Heads
Riverhead Books makes an amusing pun in a new fundraiser in which individuals can purchase 3D heads of Riverhead authors — Marlon James, Khaled Hosseini, Elizabeth Gilbert, Lauren Groff, Nick Hornby and more. Proceeds will go to the nonprofit Libraries Without Borders, which supports migrant and refugee populations in Europe by making books and learning materials accessible in multiple languages.
●
●
Karen Russell’s Note of Hope
Karen Russell spoke to Frances Yackel about love, motherhood, hope, and her new collection, Orange World and Other Stories.
●
●
●
Some links: Penguin Podcast, Lawyers on Google Print, Chicago Literature
Penguin Books UK has started a podcast. I’ve added it to my Literary Podcasts post. (via)Law blog Groklaw has a good post explaining the Google Print project and the controversy surrounding it, and Lawrence Lessig has news of a program coming up at the New York Public Library on November 17 called “The Battle Over Books: Authors and Publishers Take on the Google Print Project.”Golden Rule Jones has a list of this year’s Chicago fiction, and at Pete Lit, Pete tells us about Chicago Noir, a collection edited by Neal Pollock with stories by Adam Langer, Kevin Guilfoile and others.
Tuesday New Release Day: Eggers, Russo, Heti, Frayn, Winslow, Henkin, Brunt, Maraniss
Dave Eggers’ latest, A Hologram for the King, is out today. Also out this week is an under-the-radar, new effort from Richard Russo, Interventions, a collection that’s a collaboration with his artist daughter Kate Russo. Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? is out (Don’t miss our illuminating interview). And Michael Frayn has a new novel, Skios. More new fiction: Don Winslow’s The Kings of Cool (a prequel to Savages), Joshua Henkin’s The World Without You, and Carol Rifka Brunt’s Tell the Wolves I’m Home. In non-fiction, There’s David Maraniss’ Barack Obama: The Story.
●
●
The Kite and the String
“Some people see things others cannot, and they are right, and we call them creative geniuses. Some people see things others cannot, and they are wrong, and we call them mentally ill.” The Atlantic has an excellent contribution to the age-old thesis that creativity and madness are inextricably linked–and tied, moreover, to mental illness–based in part on a sample of students at Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Pair with another essay on creativity and the “touch of madness” from our own archives.
●
●