David Bowie was quite the avid reader. In his honor, his son, Duncan Jones, has launched an online book club that will focus on books Bowie enjoyed. The first book is Hawksmoor and the discussion is on February 1st. Will you be participating?
Join David Bowie’s Book Club
Tonight on 4th Avenue
Tonight at the Pacific Standard Fiction Series in Brooklyn, Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians, will be reading with Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief. As usual, I'll be hosting; it would be great to see you there. For more information, see Time Out New York.
Hold On
Lindsay King-Miller -- she of Ask A Queer Chick -- pays tribute to an old friend who died before her twenty-sixth birthday.
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True Coffeeshop Story
"Literary interviews became popular in the eighteen-eighties, but Richard Altick, the late professor of Victorian literature at Ohio State University, traces the public fascination with writers’ homes at least as far back as the eighteen-forties, when there was a vogue for books describing the houses and landscapes of famous authors, complete with engravings and, later, photographs.” On the strangeness of literary celebrity.
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The World Outside
Recommended Reading: Jesse Barron on Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head.
Emergent Criticism
The National Book Critics Circle has announced its inaugural class of Emerging Critics, including our own Ismail Muhammad! Read his first piece for us, "Frank Ocean and the Black Male Body," here.