A Busted Advent Calendar
The Weary World Rejoices has its unadorned moments of grief, punctuated by moments of energetic wit and intelligent levity.
Features & Reviews
9302 posts
Surviving Fictional Plagues
In honor of the release of Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet, in which “language becomes lethal,” Flavorwire reminds us of the ten “most frightening fictional diseases.” The guide breaks down…
The Misperceptions of Being a Stranger in a Strange Land
Event Factory is proof that as Renee Gladman has something new to offer, the perspective of invented linguistics encountered as a traveler.
Heather Donahue Interview
Michelle Dean interviews actress-turned-pot grower Heather Donahue about her book, Growgirl. Donahue discusses “tit whiskers,” “pot-wives,” career changes, and more. “I understand that it’s a privilege to change a life.…
The Last Book I Loved: Hygiene and the Assassin
I enjoyed this almost in the way one would enjoy a parable cut out of a much larger, didactic, philosophical novel.
There Are More Knowzits Than Ever
Coleman’s work is functional and communal; she wields the oral tradition in a way that reflects her poetry ancestry—the blues queen, Koko Taylor, for example, or the fringe Beat genius,…
E-book Recommendations
HTML Giant gives us the scoop on seven e-books “you won’t be sorry you downloaded.” First up is Rumpus contributor Joshuah Bearman’s Baghdad Country Club. (Did you see our excerpt?)
More Praise for Love and Shame and Love
The Jewish Daily Forward reviews November’s Rumpus Book Club selection, Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love. “Part epic, part bildungsroman, Peter Orner’s “Love and Shame and Love” is a…
Arizona Bans Books
Arizona has found the Tuscon Unifed School District’s Mexican American studies program in violation of a ruling that prohibits courses and classes that ‘promote the overthrow of the United States…
Rhona Cleary: The Last Book I Loved, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
Was there ever a place greyer, wetter or lonelier than Paris in the fall? For an Irish person, that’s a weighty question to consider. I guess that in some other…
A Welcome Invitation
In Francois Emmanuel’s new collection Invitation to a Voyage, the prose is elegant and refined, the subject matter heady yet accessible, and the execution nearly flawless.
Prepare Yourself Citizens!
In The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson has not only visited a nation curtained from the rest of the world, but has recreated it with compassion and humanity. The result…