It’s a pretty fine time for galleys.

I get a lot of galleys in the mail because of my role as the Fiction Editor over at The Nervous Breakdown.  Sometimes, a strange number of these seem to have phrases like “Mr. Darcy” or “Sisterhood” in the titles, and it is clear that said galleys have been sent to the wrong target reader.  Other times, there seems to be so much good shit flying around out there that it’s overwhelming and I can’t keep up.

Here are some (non-exhaustive) highlights, all linked through one of the greatest bookstores in the country, Women & Children First, here in Chicago, which kicks Amazon’s ass and makes buying a hardcover book a truly excellent act:

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Carry the One by Carol Anshaw.  I’m reading it right now and it’s gripping and, for a novel about an accidental murder, pretty damn sexy.  Art and addiction and hot lesbians and lots of messy, real life drama, this would be a hard novel not to like.

All Woman and Springtime by Brandon W. Jones.  Alice Walker is calling this new title from Algonquin Books, set in North Korea, one of the most “important novels I’ve read in many years.”

What Happened to Sophie Wilder by Christopher R. Beha.  This Tin House June release, a story of obsession, friendship and the power of storytelling, packs a great deal of intensity into a slim volume.

The Angry Buddhist by Seth Greenland.  I’m not usually a big fan of satire, but this one caught me by being set amidst the same weird, desert meth trailers that Stacy Bierlein and I routinely get lost en route amidst en route to do a guest faculty gig through U-C-Riverside.  But it’s a wild read, and now I’m getting hooked.

The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel.  If you haven’t read Mandel’s first two books, you’re missing out on one of the most compelling and eloquent young voices in recent fiction.  Her third novel, exploring mysteries of identity, reinvention and disappearance (Mandel’s core themes, in much the same way they are Dan Chaon’s), more than lives up to that early promise.

Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman. A gritty, moving depiction of poor white trailer trash (and Girl Scouts), this debut novel has powerful, messy humanity and dark humor to spare.

Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty by Diane Williams. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s Diane Williams and it’s new work.  Need I say more?

If you’re not listening to literary podcasts, you’re missing out.  Some recent highlights:

The Bat Segundo Show: now with Deborah Scroggins and upcoming with Stewart O’Nan.

Other People with Brad Listi: always good but running on an especially killer streak with new episodes featuring Caroline Leavitt, Vanessa Veselka, Alan Heathcock, Claire Bidwell Smith and Tayari Jones.

Tyson Cornell, a man with his hand in pretty much every aspect of book culture, runs broadcasts through Rare Bird Lit and takes callers.

My Chicago homie, author Ben Tanzer, runs This Podcast Will Change Your Life, and isn’t above interviewing you while drunk under the el tracks.  (Or I wasn’t above being interviewed drunk under some el tracks, is what I’m saying.)

Sunday Rumpus alums celebrate books now officially on sale:

Stacy Bierlein’s A Vacation on the Island of Ex-Boyfriends is now available for pre-order on Amazon and the indies.

Claire Bidwell Smith celebrated her official release date for The Rules of Inheritance.  Claire is smoking hot right now, people.  It’s pretty awesome.

And Miscellaneous:

Franzen comes out in favor of paper books.  Me, I’m more sympathetic to his views than I care to admit, even though they’re unrealistic and, as Quenby Moore points out, he’ll probably cash those e-book checks.

My first novel dropped just a week before I gave birth to my son—here, that old metaphor of book-and-baby as “twins” is explored further on The Millions.

The lovely Elissa Schappell shared this on FB; I’d never heard it and am not sure how I’ve previously lived.  Plath reads “Lady Lazarus.”  Chilling-gorgeous.

The first time I published Dan Chaon in Other Voices magazine, I thought, This fucking guy is gonna be a rock star.  I love being right.  Here, Dan elevates the WSJ.

Tin House writer and core faculty over at Tod Goldberg’s fab UC Riverside low residency MFA program, Mary Otis, has a line from her story animated over at Electric Literature.  These are pretty cool.

Are others out there old enough to remember Katie Roiphe’s annoying piece in Harper’s, “Making the Incest Scene,” back in 1995?  I generally consider Roiphe a shock jock.  But here she defends John Updike’s allegedly maligned literary honor, and makes some fine points.

Congrats to new Rumpus essays editor, Roxane Gay!  Here’s Roxane on running a micropress.

Roxane is fun to follow on Twitter.  Stuff pisses her off.  Recently she was bugged by Caitlin Flanagan (another practitioner of If You Have A Vagina But Diss Women, You Increase Your Chances Of Being Published In Harper’s and The Atlantic). You may remember Flanagan’s oldie disparaging the modern wife for not putting out enough. Roxane said she didn’t have time to write an essay about more recent Flanagan pet-peeves, but if she did it would no doubt rock.

Since she doesn’t, here’s seriously snarky hilarity on all things Flanagan over at The Awl.

I don’t really understand Reddit culture.  And this isn’t “literary” either.  But something cool seems afoot.  Reddit raised a wild amount of money for a vandalized orphanage in Kenya, and it sparked a whole new subreddit branch of philanthropic outreach.  More than worth checking out.

Sometimes we have to toot or our horn, or rather Emily Rapp’s horn.  Emily’s gorgeous essay on last week’s Sunday Rumpus was syndicated at Longreads, where it became a top 5 read this week, and also by Canada’s biggest daily.  Nice freaking way to make an entrance, Em!

I’m excited about Josip Novakovitch’s new book of essays from Dzanc.

Josip is a blunt, subversive, funny writer, besides knowing how to kick the reader in the chest emotionally.  We at Other Voices Books have always nursed a little crush on him.  We’ll bring him over some Sunday and spread the love.

P.S. I’ve been getting pretty cool pitches for Sundays, people!  Exciting things coming from Zoe Zolbrod, Brad Listi, Julia Goldberg, Rob Roberge, Patrick Somerville and others . . . do you have a pitch?  I’m not that hard to find . . .

The fabulously smart Roxanne Gay, interviewed in the fabulously smart podcast series Other People with Brad Listi.

Read Emily Rapp’s essay on female friendship, solicited for The Sunday Rumpus because I am obsessed with her.  Once you’re obsessed too, find more here.

And related to the chick-power theme, if you want to get your depression on re: the flip side (i.e. modeling), check out this from the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

Then, in your Is There A Gender War confusion, check out Lisa Dremousis’ claim, “I’m Mad at You Because You’re an Idiot, Not Because I’m a Woman.”

As is sometimes the case at HuffPo, their selections are kinda lame re: this “Bad Boys of Literature” list, but nothing with Hanif Kureishi on it can be all bad.

Up next Sunday, “Ten Reasons Not to Sleep With a Poet,” from Stacy Bierlein’s debut collection.  Full of stunning, heart-stopping one-liners worthy of early Ann Beattie and Lorrie Moore, and sexy as hell.

Speaking of sex: Bierlein and I also co-edited the anthology Men Undressed: Women Writers and the Male Sexual Experience, in which contributors like Jennifer Egan, Susan Minot, Aimee Bender and Lidia Yuknavitch narratively cross-dress.

Have you already seen this psychotically charming, Burning Man rendition of Oh, The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss?  For the love of all things fun, if not, check it out.

Why do you figure this near-dead Alexander Maksik sex scandal didn’t get as much press as Marie Calloway?  Though our author may be a bit of a wank, You Deserve Nothing was one of my favorite reads this year.

And kudos to Kate Zambreno, whose seethingly brilliant Green Girl is one of the only indie titles to make the Tournament of Books.

Today, in Book Review, Christopher Lura reviews Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything, David Bellos’s new treatise on the pleasure of translation. Read the review.

Musician and philosopher David Rothenberg recently sat down for a public lecture with Laurie Anderson at the venerable Explorer’s Club in New York City.

In their conversation they discussed a wide variety of topics including the minutiae of the calls made by male humpback whale, whether or not music is a language and on exploring the edges of human culture through music. The entire proceedings have been preserved for posterity at Vimeo. If you want a diversion equal parts maritime and philosophy of culture, this hits the spot. (Video below.) …more

When Jay Reatard was alive, he got called anything from “possessed” to “total dick.”

Looking back on his recorded legacy with the ease awarded by hindsight, I see that he was consumed by his own aesthetic: a wild man with a vision. …more

The UK’s Guardian runs a Poem of the Week. This week it’s ‘My Grandmother’s Opal’ by Grevel Lindop.

The accompanying article is a thoughtful discussion of the piece and of poetry’s appropriateness as a “memorial genre.” Both poem and article are contemplative, made poignant by the memories of lost loved ones that the passing holiday season often evokes.

Today in Book Review, Shawna Lang Ryan reviews two new novels by Asian American writers, Quiet As They Come by Angie Chau and Take Me Home by Brian Leung. Read the review.

Last week for my Hugo House class on using experimental films as writing prompts we spent 88 glorious minutes with House, the 1977 Japanese haunted pajama party freak-out directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. This week we puzzled ourselves with three stop-motion animated shorts. …more

Andrew Winer will be one of tonight’s readers at The Monthly Rumpus, along with M.G. Martin, Pam Houston, Chris Colin, and Kristen Tracy! With Comedy by Emily Heller and music by Boy in the Bubble and Chris Von Sneidern!

Read the Rumpus Review of his excellent new novel here.

Are there some films you have to take drugs to enjoy? I asked this question toward the end of this week’s session of the class on experimental films I’m teaching at Richard Hugo House, after spending two hours with the films of Kenneth Anger. …more

Today in Book Review, Regina Marler reviews Anthony De Sa’s new collection of stories, Barnacle Love. Read the review.

Today, in Book Review, Evan J. Peterson reviews Jon Macy’s latest graphic novel, Teleny and Camille, a new take on the Oscar Wilde story. Read the review.

I taught another session of my Experimental Films as Writing Prompts class at Hugo House last night. This one we looked at some films by Stan Brakhage. At the outset of the class I admitted that I had no idea what the hell was going to happen, how they would react to the shorts I was about to show, or whether the session would prove to have any value whatsoever. Essentially our session on Brakhage was an experiment itself, with our brains and eyeballs as test subjects. …more

Today, in Book Review, John Wilwol reviews Damon Galgut’s latest novel, In a Strange Room.

I’m teaching a class at Richard Hugo House in which we look at experimental films as writing prompts. I’ve always wanted to teach a film class, and marrying writing exercises to viewings of films seemed like a good way to shoehorn this desire into a nonprofit literary arts center. There are aspects of cinema that overlap with fiction (narrative, obviously), but I’m becoming more interested in cinema’s points of divergence from fiction, the points at which it achieves something beyond narrative, where it leaps into a realm that can only be expressed visually.

What better place to start than Un Chien Andalou? …more

Opening Lines discusses the origins and first trys of now-famous writers and other figures. Their tag line reads: “How the famous and infamous got their start.” Some of my favorite’s include that Flannery O’Connor couldn’t spell, Steve Jobs started out making illegal phones long before the iPhone, and Jennifer Egan thinks she got famous too fast – to her detriment.

The Center for Literary Arts and Litquake present an all-star reading this Sunday night at 6:30. Hosted by Rumpus Books Editor Andrew Altschul, the event features past and future CLA authors Andrew Sean Greer, Maxine Hong Kingston, Mary Roach, Kim Addonizio, and Daniel Alarcón. Venue and ticket info at the official Litquake website.