Out this week: The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani; Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro; A Girl in Exile by Ismail Kadare; The Job of the Wasp by Colin Winnette; The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin; Peculiar Ground by Lucy Hughes-Hallett; Neon in Daylight by Hermione Hoby; This Could Hurt by Jillian Medoff; The Afterlives by Thomas Pierce; Grist Mill Road by Christopher J. Yates; and King Zeno by Nathaniel Rich. For more on these and other new titles, go read our brand new book preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Slimani; Quatro; Kadare; Winnette; Benjamin; Hughes-Hallett; Hoby; Medoff; Pierce; Yates; Rich
“So, what’s your story?”
As if you weren’t in love with Augustus Waters already, the first official trailer from The Fault in Our Stars film is out, and Ansel Elgort is quite the charmer. The film releases on June 6th, but if you still haven’t read the book, here’s our own Janet Potter’s review.
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2017’s Independent Bookstore Day
Next Saturday (April 29) is Independent Bookstore Day! If you’re looking for a place to celebrate, check out our staff recommendations of tried and true mainstays. You can also map out the stores Janet Potter’s “bookstore resume,” which she freely admits has taken “the shape of a relationship history.”
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Legs All the Way to the Sofa
“It is hard to see why anyone would abandon the generous Pearce Sectional Sofa, so we must assume that whomever was under that cozy throw was taken by force. More signs of abduction: reading glasses left atop a rare antique encyclopedia, a half-finished glass of wine, and a decorative conch shell that has tumbled to the floor, not to mention the wide-open French doors.” Pottery Barn catalogue descriptions written by an aspiring crime novelist.
Digital Heaven
Recommended Reading: This piece on a digital afterlife — duplicating oneself via computer program — which is by turns troubling and oddly reassuring: “The human brain has about a hundred billion neurons. The connectional complexity is staggering. By some estimates, the human brain compares to the entire content of the internet. It’s only a matter of time, however, and not very much at that, before computer scientists can simulate a hundred billion neurons.”
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The Dungeon Master’s Workshop
Junot Diaz, author of Pulitzer-winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, started his auspicious career in the most unlikely of imaginary places: crafting stories for his friends in the tabletop roleplay game Dungeons & Dragons.
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Two books for $22 at Open Letter
To celebrate their thirteen-month anniversary, Open Letter Books is having a sale. Buy any two books from their catalog for $22, and you are also entered to win a free subscription for a full year of their titles. Don’t know where to start? Their books include Vilnius Poker, touted as the preeminent Lithuanian novel of the past twenty years, as well as Dubravka Ugresic’s formidable collection of essays, Nobody’s Home.