Out this week: Insurrecto by Gina Apostol; The April 3rd Incident by Yu Hua; Death and Other Holidays by Marci Vogel; In/Half by Jasmin B. Frelih; The Patch by John McPhee; and The End of the End of the Earth by Jonathan Franzen. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Apostol; Hua; Vogel; Frelih; McPhee; Franzen
Agent of Chaos
Recommended Reading: Daniel Marc Janes on the fictional namesakes of London’s mayor.
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By Way of a Recommendation
Charles D’Ambrosio‘s Loitering has officially made it into our Hall of Fame. It was also a finalist for the PEN award for the Art of the Essay. Now the book’s preface is available on the PEN website, just in case all the book’s popularity and prizes haven’t yet convinced you to read it.
But just maybe you’ll beat the odds
If you find yourself in a sporting mood, you can place a bet on who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I personally like Alice Munro’s 20/1 odds for taking the award, though Haruki Murakami’s 10/1 make him the safer bet.
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Dostoyevsky’s Yard Sales
This edition of Apartment Therapy with Ivan Ilych from the good people over at McSweeney’s will have you packing up shop and heading for St. Petersburg in no time. For a slightly more serious take on Tolstoy, here’s a piece on morals and manners in The Death of Ivan Ilych.
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Rock On
Fancy yourself a trivia buff? This quiz might be your undoing. In The Guardian, you can test your knowledge of prominent bands in fiction, from real-life bands that reference books to bands in famous novels.
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Laura Hillenbrand
Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit and Unbroken, discusses her life with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. “I’m looking for a way out of here. I can’t have it physically, so I’m going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination.”
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“Copywrong”
“At bottom, the argument about copyright is not really a philosophical argument. It’s a battle between interest groups.” Louis Menand writes about American copyright law in the digital age for The New Yorker, and his essay pairs well with the many articles on copyright we’ve published over the years.
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