Important.
The Morning News Tournament of Books - Presented by Field Notes →
Jessica Lamb-Shapiro and I, so very lonely in our championship votes.
possible last words
“We had a good time, didn’t we?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Wow.”
Here’s the official cover for Jonathan Franzen’s Purity:
Here’s my “improved” version:
You’re welcome, Franzen.
Paul Beatty on writing, humor and race: 'There are very few books that are funny' →
Sarah Silverman has gushed about his latest book, The Sellout, saying he ‘uses humor like a surgeon uses anesthesia’. Beatty’s real skill, however, is in defining what it means to be black – laughing to keep from crying in an America insisting that it’s moved on from your trauma
How to Train Your Raptor →
When Helen Macdonald’s father died, she decided to make a life with a sharp-clawed goshawk.
Upcoming in the work place: feelings about diaries written for public consumption. The private made public. But as I flip through them, the one feeling I have, overweeningly, is: so what? I could care less about someone else’s diary. However, it’s not fair to the writer. I’m not open right now and I know it. I could care less about someone else’s I when my I feels rife with meaning and history right now. It sucks, too, because it’s so easy to write off the diary as mere women’s words.
Sight Unseen: Birdman 4
This image made me laugh a lot. I can’t wait to write my Franzen anti-hero dramedy for HBO. Franzen! 2024: the story of a writer who just can’t get it right, ya’ll.
Recommendations
Elisa Albert, After Birth: A complicated, funny, wicked novel that I can’t help but underline on my second rereading. Sometimes we get the right books in our lives when we are going through some shit, and this book is it for me right now. It is also – how do I put this? – accurate on what it can be like to move to a place that you didn’t choose and how lonely it can be to try to find a friend in that muck. I can’t write about it because I’d sound like a dick (Elisa Albert is not afraid to sound like a dick, it’s great), but I was very lonely when I lived upstate, desperate for friendship, and it’s such a weird feeling. It’s easier to find people that are likeminded enough in cities.
The new Father John Misty album. I love him.
When you and Zadie Smith write the same thing. Well only sort of.
How Amazon and 'Fifty Shades of Grey' Created a Golden Age for Self-Published Romance Authors — and Why It May Already Be Over →
“Romance never does go out of fashion. It’s radical.” – Bob Dylan, AARP Magazine For Monica Murphy, a New York Times and USA Today bestselling romance writer living in the foothills of California’s…