-Maybe you are tired of looking at a computer screen. Maybe you’re just not a visual person. Maybe you want a new lens into Richard Yates, by Tao Lin. Whatever your needs, Largehearted Boy has just the right medicine: a musical playlist, created by Lin, that relates in some way to his new novel. It’s […]
...moreMake sure to check out the Rumpus Poetry Book Club’s online discussion with Shane Book, this month’s featured poetry author who brings us Ceiling of Sticks. You can read the transcript, in which book club members ask Book (real name) about his background, his different uses of form poetry, and his editing process. Also notable: […]
...more1. Confused about where we are in the book club queue? Eager to find out what’s coming later in the fall? Haven’t ever witnessed Steven Elliott use the phrase “shake and bake”? Look no further than Book Club Announcements. 2. Adam Levin, author of The Instructions, constructs an original manifesto on how to start a […]
...more-Tao Lin, author of the August book club pick Richard Yates, has become notorious for his pranks, cons, and general attempts to outwit his readers and/or neighborhood bookstore employees. So when the New York Observer‘s Christian Lorentzen set out to interview him, he decided to replicate Lin’s style. Written entirely in third person, the Observer interview […]
...more-Tao Lin’s in the spotlight this month; his latest book Richard Yates is our August Book Club pick, and it seems like everyone has some questions for him. Including, well, Tao Lin.
...more-The big news for Doug Dorst this week was that his new book, The Surf Guru, was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review. Writer Robin Romm extols Dorst’s ability to push limits, to stretch the conventions of what stories should like like. Plus, Romm adds of Dorst’s tales, “They’re fun-loving, testosterone-rich yarns.” Boston […]
...more-Last week, Nerve‘s The Hype Line claimed Doug Dorst’s The Surf Guru as one of the five things it couldn’t look away from. Writes Ray Rahman: “When you pick up a book written by a guy who knows that a ‘chigoe’ is a sand-dwelling variety of a flea (Jeopardy! Episode #4985, for $400), you’re pretty much guaranteed […]
...moreWe’re sure you’ve been anticipating Rick Moody’s The Four Fingers of Death (out today) as much as we have, but in case you have some catching up to do, here’s a round-up of the reviews:
...moreYou read last week in The Rumpus about the new “statistical analysis tool” that tells you who you write like. Coding Robots, a group of software developers, seemingly created I Write Like just for fun; the page analyzes your word choice and writing style and spits back a writer it compares you to (out of […]
...moreNew this week, The Rumpus presents a smattering of Book Club related news, including highlights of past, present, and future books in our queue. -You may have already caught Daniel Handler’s excellent review of John Brandon’s Citrus County (bloggers are linking to it left and right). Now, check out the follow-up on Paper Cuts: Stray […]
...moreIn her book Tortured: When Good Soldiers Do Bad Things, journalist Justine Sharrock takes a close look at low-ranking soldiers who engaged in acts of torture.
...moreWe’ve all heard the stories about people getting fired from jobs because of overly revealing Facebook photos, or of couples breaking up by changing their Facebook “relationship status” before even talking to one another. Though Facebook is meant to exist in virtual reality, we have given it the power to seep into and intermingle with […]
...moreStarved for funds, the United States Postal Service recently considered cutting its mail delivery service down to five-days a week–not a huge surprise considering their losses over the last couple of years and the fact that Americans are relying more and more on electronic measures of communication. In short, letter writing is becoming a dying […]
...moreSinger/Songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, a folk opera set in a post-Apocalyptic Depression-Era, illuminates the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus through the twangs and harmonies of folk music. If that seems like a disjointed mix of influences, listen to Hadestown and you’re likely to be convinced that Mitchell’s ambitious project holds all of its thematic […]
...moreI’ve just started walking with photographer Mark Murrmann down Polk Street in San Francisco, and already he’s busted out his camera and started snapping shots of a street construction project. For Murrmann, no scene is too mundane to make memorable.
...moreWith healthcare reform moving at such a sluggish rate, we’ve all become pretty exasperated by the worsening creases in Washington. In the face of so much disagreement, thank goodness the environmental movement is so unified. Who in their right mind can disagree on the war on global warming? Not so fast. Johann Hari has just […]
...moreIt’s that one day in the midst of dreary February that’s supposed to remind you to reach out to the one you love or lust after. But chances are you are either swinging solo or just sick of all the saccharine propaganda pouring from every storefront and supermarket display. To get in a more appropriate […]
...moreFirst there was the bitter move by Amazon to remove all Macmillan titles from its digital inventory after Macmillan demanded higher e-book pricing. Then two more publishing houses publicly denounced Amazon’s dime a dozen approach to pricing e-books at $9.99. Now, in the latest installment in the tug-of-war over e-book prices, publishers have convinced online […]
...moreDesperate to save their businesses, the private companies who sell loans to college students have been heavily lobbying the government to keep subsidizing their loan programs. A bill that will overhaul the private loan industry recently passed in Congress with clear support from President Obama, who stated in his recent State of the Union Address […]
...moreUpdate: Amazon caves to Macmillan’s demands! Read on to learn more about the dispute: After Macmillan Publishers challenged Amazon‘s pricing of e-books for Kindle users, Amazon retaliated on Friday by pulling not only all e-books by Macmillan authors but also physical literature by the publisher as well. Macmillan is a large international publishing house with […]
...moreNot long ago Bloomsbury published author Justine Larbalestier’s novel Liar, which revolves around an African-American protagonist, with a white girl’s face on the cover. The choice was made against Larbalestier’s wishes and to the shock of many readers, and Bloomsbury eventually agreed to publish another edition with a cover model more in line with Liar’s protagonist’s […]
...more“To me folk music is about storytelling, and opera is about storytelling, so there’s no contradiction at all.”
...moreThirty years have passed since Joan Didion composed The White Album, her book of essays about the unsettling thrills and shadows of 1970’s LA, and by now the book’s title might as well refer to the hair color of its many personalities. Didion herself is seventy-five, and the era she wrote about has been eclipsed […]
...moreThe Rumpus presents the second installment of an index to “The Last Book I Loved” Series.
...moreThe decision by voters in several states to ban gay marriage has more than ruffled the feathers of many gay rights activists. In a country where half of all marriages end in divorce, many argue that the traditional marriage “protected” in measures such as California’s Proposition 8 has been marred by millions of broken vows. […]
...moreKaylie Jones, daughter of James Jones who penned From Here to Eternity, revealed in an interview with The Daily Beast that her father was forced to remove gay sex scenes from his original manuscript prior to publication. Jones had originally included discussions and details about sexual favors and relationships between male soldiers, which were deemed […]
...moreOn October 21st, Jack Kerouac had been dead exactly forty years. You’d be pressed to find a more quoted, misunderstood, revered, and culturally significant icon of the latter half of the 20th century. Yet his literary contributions remain pretty controversial. As Guardian writer David Barnett points out in “Misremembering Jack Kerouac”: “The evidence against Kerouac […]
...moreBibliophiles of the world, take note: if you are not an inhabitant of the Twin Cities, you could be missing a chance to put your literary acumen to practical use. The literati of the “most literate city of 2008” have banded together to create a literary scavenger hunt entitled Around the Literary Twin Cities in […]
...moreThe author of a novel, who recommended it, how the cover is designed, and what awards it has won often sway readers into buying literature, but it’s not often that readers select books on the basis of who’s published them. “Branding, the Future of Publishing?”, an article on Vroman’s Bookstore blog, examines the effect a […]
...moreSaying the word “journalism” these days is like openly inviting those around you to either deliver a lecture on the evils of technology, pontificate about the end of the written word, or expound on their emotional attachment to The New York Times. Also on the list of hot journalism topics right now is the burgeoning […]
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