Thirty-eight letters written from the To Kill a Mockingbird author to a friend from 2005-2010 are up for auction this week, including Harper Lee‘s reaction to Barack Obama‘s inauguration. See also: this close reading of the birds themselves.
The Harper Lee Industry Chugs On
Summer Comics Recommendations
July is the month of revolutions and upheavals, as Tom Nissley has asserted, so maybe you’ll want to change gears from reading literature and literary non-fiction to instead investigate some of the summer’s best comics. On this journey, Kevin Nguyen will be your guide.
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Stark
Recommended Reading: A series of short pieces by Rumpus readers on the subject of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
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Best New Blogs
A fresh take on the year-end list: Bygone Bureau’s Best New Blogs of 2010.
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Krakow Named Seventh City of Literature
UNESCO announced this week that Krakow has been named the seventh City of Literature. The Polish municipality joins Edinburgh, the first UNESCO City of Literature, and Iowa City, Melbourne, Dublin, Reykjavik and Norwich. The city has been home to such notable authors as Nobel Prize winners Henryk Sienkiewicz, Władysław Stanisław Reymont, Czesław Miłosz, and Wisława Szymborska.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Erdrich; Müller; Haddon; Barnes; Null; Hurley; Abramson; Cage
Out this week: LaRose by Louise Erdrich; The Fox Was Ever the Hunter by Herta Müller; The Pier Falls by Mark Haddon; The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes; Allegheny Front by Matthew Neill Null; The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley; Just Life by Neil Abramson; and The Selected Letters of John Cage. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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“The New York Times, the paper of record, had written a fictitious character to verify a fact.”
Patrick Somerville’s latest novel, This Bright River, was recently reviewed in The New York Times by Janet Maslin, who found the book to be, among other things, “soggy.” Unfortunately, some of her critique was based on a mistaken reading of Somerville’s work. I’ll let Patrick take it from here.