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
Beware of the Dog
This week in book-related news: a new coffee table book devoted solely to Marc Jacobs’ bull terrier, who happens to be an Instagram celebrity.
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Grid World
“He is for the most part interested in documenting the sources of our unusual suffering, those initial shocks that brought about the trauma in the first place. Nothing ‘languishes listlessly’ in his music; all those slowly orbiting fragments are drawn back together in furious rotation, sucked inexorably in, towards a volatile core. The mood never stabilizes; madness reigns supreme.” This piece by Tom Regel at The Rumpus on realism in the work of DJ/Producer Flying Lotus is both thorough and convincing.
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J.D. Salinger at Home
The new J.D. Salinger exhibit at the New York Public Library includes a hand-drawn mock-up of the minimalist book covers that accompany his works.
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iMortality
What would happen if you had a clock to countdown the exact number of days until you died? Our own Mark O’Connell discovers the paranoia of having the Days of Life app measure his mortality at The New Yorker. “Days of Life functions like a reductio ad absurdum of the logic of personal productivity. The pie chart becomes a special way of being afraid: an image of the self as a micro-economy of numbered days.” For a more uplifting version of O’Connell, check out his 2013 Year in Reading post.
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