Out this week: The Only Girl in the World by Maude Julien; Witch Wife by Kiki Petrosino; In the Fall They Come Back by Robert Bausch; and Women and Power by Mary Beard. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Julien; Petrosino; Bausch; Beard
Dear Matthew Specktor
Thanks to Stephen Elliot‘s Letters in the Mail project, LARB senior editor Matthew Specktor finds himself admiring the gorgeous handwriting of strangers, feeling tickled and gobsmacked, and reflecting on letter writing as something “beautifully useless to do.”
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Harem Life
Few people have a stranger life story than Jillian Lauren. A former party girl of a royal harem in Brunei, she overcame a heroin addiction to become, among other things, a writer with two memoirs to her name. At The Nervous Breakdown, she talks about her latest book, her religious faith and her adopted Ethiopian son.
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Toni Morrison Dies at 88
Novelist of our hearts Toni Morrison died Monday night, her publisher reports, at the age of 88. Morrison won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her best-selling, groundbreaking novel "Beloved," and was the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1993.
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Kids These Days
“The complexity of texts students are being assigned to read has declined by about three grade levels over the past 100 years,” says Eric Stickney, the educational research director for Renaissance Learning.
“That city in the backseat.”
Recommended Reading: Isle of Youth author Laura van den Berg’s story, “Where Will All the Buildings Go?”
Great Moments in Travel Writing
The Telegraph publishes a piece by Paul Theroux in connection with his new book about travel lit, The Tao of Travel. In the piece, Theroux recounts some of the great feats of the genre.
Too Much Imagining
Jonah Lehrer has resigned from his staff position at the New Yorker, after Tablet Magazine revealed he had fabricated quotes–from Bob Dylan, no less!–in his bestseller Imagine: How Creativity Works, which since has been pulled from the market. Michael C. Moynihan, the journalist who discovered the deception, was interviewed by the Observer, saying he felt “horrible” watching vitriolic reactions pour in. Previously the book saw critique for its loose science in both The New Republic and The Millions.
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Help Put Books in the Hands of NYC Kids
ReadThis and The Center for Fiction are throwing a day-long event featuring the likes of Elizabeth Gilbert, Rick Moody, Kurt Andersen, Sam Lipsyte, and Jamaica Kincaid. It’s taking place at 17 East 47th Street in Manhattan on Saturday April 10th. “The price of admission? Your donation of two or more new or gently used board books through grade 12.”