There’s only a week left before this year’s election. The campaign trails are taking their last, gasping breaths, finally, and we’re almost home free from what’s felt like the longest, most painful, most soul-irking torture known to American politics. Finally. As readers we should just admit that, this year especially, books have been our happy place, our sanctum away from FOX News and email scandals and all those Bad Hombres. But, as BookRiot reminded us, some books often serve more as a model for tense times than a refuge from it. We’re talking about A Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s hellish thriller and …
What does an author do after winning the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and breaking hearts and souls with over 80 works of fiction and non-fiction? Give back of course! Yesterday, according to the New York Times, Philip Roth pledged to donate roughly 4,000 books to his “other home”, the Newark Public Library. Roth’s personal collection of books will be housed in a single room of the library, designed by the architect Henry Myerberg. His design, which seeks to recreate the look and feel of Roth’s own home library, will be rich with the works of Salinger, Bellow, Schulz, Kafka and …
Last night Zadie Smith spoke at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Anticipating a reading from her newest novel, Swing Time (November 15), which focuses on dancing and the ways we construct time, the author announced that, due to publisher’s advice (eye roll), she would instead be reading one of her short stories, “Two Men Arrive in a Village”. Book Buttons Embed ISBN: 9781524723194 Any initial dismay at the departure from Swing Time was quickly dispelled when she began reading. Smith, who used to perform as a cabaret singer, has a powerfully melodic voice that gives grace to just about every word. The small crowd of …
Emma Watson, the outspoken actor/activist/cool girl in the way of all things feminism and Harry Potter lore, has selected her book club’s next read. For the months of November and December, Our Shared Shelf will be reading Mom & Me & Mom, by Maya Angelou. Book Buttons Embed ISBN: 9781400066117 Here’s what Watson shared about her pick, earlier this week on Goodreads: Dear Our Shared Shelf, November and December’s book will be Mom & Me & Mom, Maya Angelou’s final work, published a year before her death, in 2013, when she was 85 years old. It was the first book to …
We’ve heard the news. You’ve heard the news. Let’s not dwell on retellings and re-enactments. While many are happy to see that the 2016 title of Nobel Laureate has reached its feelers into oral tradition and spoken word, others see Dylan’s win as a backhanded dis to the literary community. This latter group is saying really?, and feeling that the attention and power a laureate receives could be better used in another’s hands. Because upset rings louder than praise in the dark hashtagged void that is Twitter, storm of berating tweets we’ve seen this week is really no surprise. There have …
