Since the world is going to end this year and everything, it’s never been a better time to follow the advice of P.J. O’Rourke, who recommends that you “always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” Not that anyone will be around to see you, we guess. Luckily, there are a ton of really exciting books coming out this year, including many that we’d be racing to read apocalypse or no, and good looks aside. Since publishing schedules are not often announced super-far in advance, and they’re subject to change based on a million factors, this is really a first half of 2012 list, heavy on spring releases, to be followed by a second-half of the year list in the summer. Click through to check out the books we’re most looking forward to in the first half of this year (boy was it hard to narrow it down to just ten!), and let us know which others you’re having trouble waiting for in the comments.
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There’s no polite way to say it. The star of Roberto Bolaño’s long-awaited novel, The Third Reich, is a geek — a gamer geek, to be precise. And it’s the real-world implications of his all-consuming pastime that underlie the book’s action, even as he relaxes on the beach with his beautiful girlfriend and parties into the night with new friends. The immense role gaming plays in Bolaño’s atmospheric, slow-burning novel, written before The Savage Detectives and 2666 and serialized by The Paris Review in advance of its publication last month, got us thinking about the many memorable geeks contemporary literature has given us. A selection of our favorites is after the jump; add yours in the comments. Read More »
This past week, Jack Kerouac’s first-ever novel, The Sea is My Brother, was finally published 40 years after his death. The novel, long thought to be lost by experts, was unearthed in Kerouac’s personal archive by his brother-in-law. We are constantly inspired by the way that our over-processed world still hangs on to its secrets, and even more by the way that bits of history can hide in plain sight, so to celebrate this newest development in the literary canon, we decided to take a look at Kerouac’s newest/oldest book and other lost novels that were eventually found again. Click through to see our list of lost and found novels, and if you’ve ever had a literary relative, get ready to go hunting in your attics for your own treasure chests. Read More »
Remember last month when we rounded up a bunch of fake books from fiction that we wished that we could read? Well, today we have some slightly-related news to report: Our friends over at GalleyCat tipped us off to the fact that Granta has released an animated graphic novel that was inspired by the fictional B-horror movie that the narrator in Roberto Bolaño’s short story, “The Colonel’s Son,” watches on late night TV. How delightfully meta is that? Illustrator Owen Freeman, web developer Eduard Prats Molner, and the literary quarterly’s artistic director, Michael Salu, all collaborated on the project, which features an original score by composer Sorgerune. If you’re feeling brave (and have your headphones on), click here to check it out now!
It’s the first of the month, and you know what that means: a brand new spate of new literary releases to delve into. Not that we mind — the weather’s getting brisker (not to mention those snowstorms, NYC), and we really can’t think of anything better to do than to curl up with a cup of hot cider and a great novel (or memoir, or book of essays, or short story collection). Don’t be put off by the number of big names on our list this month — we like a struggling first novel as much as the next blog, but November is the month for publishers to pull out their big guns, and boy have they ever. Click through to see our list of ten must-reads coming out this month, and let us know which books you’re most psyched to dig into in the comments.
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Yesterday, Patti Smith’s first major photography exhibition, Camera Solo, opened at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Smith opened the show, which boasts 70-odd intimate black and white photographs shot with either a vintage Land 100 or a Land 250 Polaroid camera, a multi-media installation, and a video work, with an hour-long performance that doubled as a birthday salute to Rimbaud, her ultimate muse. Fitting, because many of the gorgeous, misty photographs are inspired by artifacts from some of Smith’s favorite artists, from museums she has visited around the world, and many are from her personal life, making the show as a whole feel like a complex view of her world and the things that inspire her. For those that can’t make it to Hartford, or who just can’t get enough, an accompanying book, Patti Smith: Camera Solo, is also slated to come out at the end of the month. Click through to see a few images from the exhibition, and let us know what you think in the comments.
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Last month, we ran a highly contentious list of disturbing novels and short stories, from Flannery O’Connor’s 1955 classic, “A Good Man is Hard To Find,” to Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. This month, we’ve combed through the comments in order to find our favorite disturbing book suggestions from readers who had a bone to pick with our original choices. The following list contains an assortment of writers from our fair nation as well as a few key stories from abroad, and all of the stories included are guaranteed to disturb. An especially well-read commenter suggested the surreal poetic novel/poem Les Chants de Maldoror, which offers the following warning to readers: “The lethal fumes of this book shall dissolve his soul as water does sugar.” So get ready to toss and turn tonight, because these books are meant to unsettle.
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A couple weeks ago, we read a wonderful essay over at The Millions in which the author dissected the feeling of reading a Great Big Important Novel — versus, say, a Slim Prestige Novel — suggesting that part of what we love about a GBIN comes from a sort of literary Stockholm Syndrome, a somewhat sick scrounging for brief moments of kindness between hundreds of punishing pages. This may be so, though there is something inherently satisfying and unrelated to prestige about sinking into a novel that is long enough to become your companion for weeks or months, and we’ve always been sorry when a wonderful (and wonderfully long) book is finally over. Fair warning: your author is one who cannot bear to leave a book (any book) unfinished after reaching the point of no return at about page twenty, and considering this, it seems helpful to dissect the merits of the long versus the short in the oeuvres of particular authors, so we can all make informed decisions whether to imprison ourselves within the pages of a doorstop or breezily choose the shorter version. Click through to see our picks for the long versus the short of some of our favorite authors, and let us know whether you agree in the comments!
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We’ve already reviewed the spate of unconventional literary autobiographies released last year, but 2011 is quickly shaping up to also be a year of fresh books by and about beloved bygone writers. Encompassing speeches, letter correspondences, essays, unpublished stories, and posthumous investigations, these upcoming books offer new insights into the intellects, imaginations, and lives of dearly departed cultural icons.
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Last week, we published a list of 10 essential books of the past 25 years. It was one of our most popular posts of all time, as well as one of our most contentious, racking up over 100 comments. Much of the argument has focused on the list’s lack of diversity: of the 10 books, eight were written by white men.
Since best-of lists can’t help but be subjective and flawed, and because there have been so many game-changing books by women and people of color in the past 25 years, we’ve put together an alternate top 10 list. Don’t think of it as an affirmative action move or a consolation prize, but rather as proof that you could make an equally strong list of the past few decades’ greatest literary achievements without including a single American- or British-born white guy. The highbrow novels, page-turning bestsellers, and one particularly inspired graphic novel after the jump all challenged the received wisdom that literature is or should be dominated by white dudes.
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