“A group of young, attractive, if somewhat emotionally crippled people, who otherwise seem to have things going for them, have decided upon a secret pact to effectively end their futures. They want you to join them. Dinner parties at other people’s houses are involved.” For McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Erika Vause asks the question that needed to be asked: Does this harrowing plot summary describe a critically acclaimed film of the 2010s, or does it describe your PhD program? (Spoiler alert: It’s both.) Pair with this list of horror films about writers from the archives and you’ve got a real scarefest on your hands. We’re laughing, but we’re also crying.
Strange Cults, Powerful Elders, and Other Features of Academia
Nevermind
Robert Fitterman, author of Nevermind, a book of poems created from Nirvana’s seminal album, interviews critic and scholar Paul Stephens about his own work and Nirvana’s art. Looking for more music related lit? Check out our Torch Ballads and Jukebox Music section.
Writermaker
At The Daily Beast, a reading list by the novelist Nick Harkaway, who claims that he reads so many books at once that “if the stack fell on me I’d be injured.” Back in March, our own Emily St. John Mandel reviewed his second novel, Angelmaker.
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day: Hill; Donohoe; Bausch; Hall & Hobbs
Out this week: The Nix by Nathan Hill; Ashes of Fiery Weather by Kathleen Donohoe; The Legend of Jesse Smoke by Robert Bausch; and Sex and Death, a new story anthology including pieces by Kevin Barry, Wells Tower and Yiyun Li. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
●
●
Darkest Images
Recommended Viewing: these entries to a contest in which entrants were asked to draw Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
●
●
Kevin Nguyen at It Again
“[P]ublishing is a behemoth that is trudging along slowly in the direction of progress. But it still has a long way to go.” GQ editor and Year-in-Reading alum Kevin Nguyen gets the interview treatment from Poets & Writers (and gives a few shout-outs to us while he’s at it!). Among the books he’s read in the last year that stood out: “White Tears by Hari Kunzru by a mile.”
●
●
Illness as Metaphor
Melissa Broder shares her thoughts on open marriage and illness in an excerpt from her So Sad Today. Pair with Gila Lyons’s Millions essay on writing through illness.
●
●
It’s Science
One big round of applause for everyone; according to a new study, if you read books you will earn more money. Importantly, the cap seems to be around ten books per year–any more than this and the correlation between books read and income per year dissipates. But don’t let that stop you!
●
●