Out this week: Vacationland by John Hodgman; Funeral Platter by Greg Ames; True Stories by Francis Spufford; and The First Day by Phil Harrison. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Hodgman; Ames; Spufford; Harrison
Literary One-Hit Wonders
Second Act lists the renowned literary one-hit wonders, including John Kennedy Toole, Sylvia Plath and Ralph Ellison. (via AuthorScoop)
SUNY Buffalo’s Electronic Poetry Center
Recommended Reading: Just about every poet listed on SUNY Buffalo’s Electronic Poetry Center, but particularly the work of my former creative writing professor, Paolo Javier. His page was added two days ago.
Music for Book Lovers
The publishers of the 33 1/3 series have made public the entire list of suggested albums submitted by their readers for the next book. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss your chance–the “Under-22” category is open through May of 2016. Pair it with our own Emily Colette Wilkinson’s hilarious musical soundtrack for her graduate school screenplay.
Street Smart
Fancy a stroll? Flaneur, a new Berlin-based magazine, profiles one street per issue. It explores the culture, literature, people, and landmarks that make each street unique. The first is Berlin’s Kantstrasse. Pair with: Hyperreal Cartography, a tumblr of “real maps of places that exist but don’t.”
Smoking Knausgaard
“[E]ach video is a portrait of the artist as a beginner—and a look at the creative process, in all its joy, abjection, delusion, and euphoria.” The Paris Review has a new video series called “My First Time,” in which big-name authors talk about getting their start. Helen DeWitt, Jeffrey Eugenides, Sheila Heti, a chain-smoking Karl Ove Knausgaard – what more could anyone want? More origin stories, that’s what! Six writers – Colum McCann, Alexander Chee, Jami Attenberg, Emily St. John Mandel, Justin Taylor, and Anthony Marra – look back on their first books for us.
New from Jess Walter
The Financial Lives of the Poets author Jess Walter has a new short story out in the Kindle Single format: “Don’t Eat Cat“.
Next Up: The Norton Anthology of Infographics
Now that they’ve announced the impending publication of The Best American Infographics, it might be prudent to revisit Reif Larsen’s classic Millions article, “This Chart Is a Lonely Hunter: The Narrative Eros of the Infographic.”