Out this week: Heavy by Kiese Laymon; Girls Write Now by the Girls Write Now program; Melmoth by Sarah Perry; In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt; Trinity by Louisa Hall; Sleep of Memory by Patrick Modiano; and Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Laymon; GWN; Perry; Hunt; Hall; Modiano, Kingsolver
A Little Late
"[T]he school has calculated that the overdue fine would have been £7,446." Granddaughter returns her grandfather's library book after 120 years, is forgiven all late fines, reports The Guardian.
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Why Reread?
Nabokov once claimed "there is no reading, only rereading." In an essay for the New York Review of Books, Tim Parks pursues the "key to rereading," taking The Waste Land and Mrs. Dalloway as his test cases.
Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award Winners Announced
For the past 17 years, the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award has celebrated "six women writers who demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers." This year's winners are Melanie Diane (poetry), Apricot Irving (nonfiction), Fowzia Karimi (fiction), Namwali Serpell (fiction), Merritt Tierce (fiction), and JoAnn Wypijewski (nonfiction). They will accept their awards on September 22 in New York City.
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Invisible Ink
Recommended Reading: On Elizabeth Bishop’s secret writings.
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Good Grief
With his depressive musings, Charlie Brown was the original Morrissey. At "This Charming Charlie" tumblr, Lauren LoPrete pairs The Smiths lyrics with Peanuts comics to hilarious effect.
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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.
Word comics of the day
Recommended RSS-ing: A better word of the day from artist Tory Hoke, who pairs each unusual word with a hand-drawn comic. Friday's entry, "spurcitious," is charmingly defined in relation to a thumb and a hammer. Hate pictures? Other tried-and-true options include curators at Merriam-Webster, The New York Times, and this guy on Twitter.
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Poignant Sci-Fi Variety Hour
In the early ‘70s, Kurt Vonnegut helped produce a TV adaptation of his work, Between Time and Timbuktu, that aired on the public TV program NET Playhouse. The adaptation brought together elements from several of the author’s most famous works, including Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle and "Harrison Bergeron." At Black Balloon Publishing’s blog, you can find YouTube clips and links to the printed script. (Related: our own Lydia Kiesling read Vonnegut's Letters.) (h/t The Rumpus)
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