Scene of destruction at the Factor Druk printing house, after it was hit by a Russian missile in May.

Ukraine's bookstores are thriving, but a top printing plant took a deadly hit

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/18/nx-s1-5041979/russia-ukraine-war-books-publishing-literature-kharkiv

 

FOR TEN YEARS or more, my weekday alarm is set for 6:23. I get moving, meditate like I have for 40-some years, text a Cleveland friend to let him know I’m still alive. C-SPAN at 7:00 on my phone like radio. Make the bed. Exercise briefly with some light weights. Make sure the lights are off and the refrigerator door is closed, and head out. I love the routine. 

The best recent poetry – review roundup

Fierce Elegy by Peter Gizzi; Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo; Bark, Archive, Splinter by Jay Gao; Polkadot Wounds by Anthony Vahni Capildeo; Goodlord by Ella Frears; Skeletons by Deborah Landau

https://apple.news/A1hTTOQnKS4mglqoRqrJ4Sw

 

Beach Reads

We spent a sweltering summer Saturday at Jacob Riis Park to get some bookshelf inspiration

.(

‘New

York’ Magazine)

https://www.thecut.com/article/summer-reading-list-2024-beach-reads-photo-essay.html

 

Garth Risk Hallberg: ‘David Foster Wallace convinced me to change the way I was living’

The American author on how Infinite Jest made him face up to his substance abuse, and the joy of Judy Blume

https://apple.news/AvUJbj1v0Sa-bvDBeJyHq0A

I’M GOING to put this in my bag this morning when I go downtown with the sign. I’m going to read it on the subway again a little each day for the third time.

 

These classic ’60s books shout from the shelves to be read again
.

Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Harper Lee and others asked provocative, brave questions about many of the same urgent issues we face today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/06/28/national-book-awards-1960s/

 

Can We Watch Reality TV Guilt Free? Emily Nussbaum Has the Answer for You

https://apple.news/AC0gA6U_sRIqW4SOv_Fj2ZA

Meet the people behind three of the UK’s brilliant independent bookshops

Rebuilding from a fire, competing with Amazon and launching during lockdown – how these indies continue to thrive

https://apple.news/A2OnLISprSaSo1XLYZgdOTg

 

‘I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.’

 ~Joan Didion

I JUST READ THIS TWICE IN A FEW MONTHS. I read it on the subway only, on the way with my sign in the morning. I keep it in the old Patagonia bag I take with me. So it was slow going, a couple pages a day. The train trip is short and I usually stand on the more-crowded return train. ANYWAY, it’s quite a book. Won the Pulitzer Prize. I may read it again. A memoir. A Taiwanese-American student at Berkeley. Why would I read it twice and maybe/probably again? An honest-seeming voice, good details. Very good details. A real life. 

 

Nell Irvin Painter’s understanding of America is beautiful and bracing. 

We should listen.
“I Just Keep Talking” brings together wide-ranging and pointed essays by the author of “The History of White People.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/06/12/nell-irvin-painter-just-keep-talking-essays-review/

 

THE SIGN is by the door ready for 7:40 in the morning when I take it with me to the subway downtown. Many of the same people see me every weekday when I hold the sign on Chambers Street. Some give a thumbs-up every time. A bright-faced Latino young woman folds her hands prayerfully and moves her mouth shyly without making any sound and says, Thank You. Sometimes I say to her, sometimes I say it to others:  It Would Change the World.

 

9 LGBTQ+ Authors on the First Books They Saw Themselves In

https://apple.news/AK0TsQ9WMQA6KOUEy6JXwLw

 

States begin to push back on book bans – by banning them

2:14 PM EDT June 4, 2024

As a record number of school districts face bans on certain books and lawmakers enact measures that limit what can be taught about race and sexual identity in the classroom, some states are moving to counter the measures with laws that prohibit banning books.

https://apple.news/AdWbne4mTQ12nz6Jx5n5UFQ

Where to start with: Rachel Cusk

From a novel sequence that dispenses with much of what we expect from fiction to fearlessly honest memoirs of motherhood and divorce, Cusk is a challenging writer. But also a genius

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jun/04/where-to-start-with-rachel-cusk

After Words (from C-SPAN, a video conversation)

Mike Hixenbaugh

NBC investigative reporter Mike Hixenbaugh looked at how issues around race and identity are playing out in school districts around the country. He was interviewed by Chalkbeat story editor and author Cara Fitzpatrick.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?534839-1/after-words-mike-hixenbaugh#

 

Elaine May wasn’t involved with her biography. That didn’t stop this author from telling the comedy icon’s complex story

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2024-05-29/elaine-may-biography-comedy-icon-carrie-courogen

‘My mother used to color in all the characters in my picture books brown, with a brown magic marker. So, when I read The Little Prince, he had the same complexion as me because of her loving hand.’

-Lynn Nottage

 

The lasting impact of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the U.S.A’

’
Steven Hyden’s “There Was Nothing You Could Do” explores the blockbuster album, which turns 40 next month.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/05/23/born-in-the-usa-bruce-springsteen-book-review/

In Honor of Duke Ellington: Here Are 15 Great Books About Jazz

Ed Simon Recommends Langston Hughes, Dorothy Baker, Geoff Dyer, and More

https://lithub.com/in-honor-of-duke-ellington-here-are-15-great-books-about-jazz/

THE JOURNALIST BIOGRAPHY IN AN AGE OF CRISIS

A memoir by Nicholas Kristof and a biography of Barbara Walters invoke halcyon days in the news business. What can we learn from their lives?

https://apple.news/AFSclVoSXTEe4jyCUH8CK3g

 

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck wins International Booker prize 

Erpenbeck is the first German writer and Michael Hofmann the first male translator to win the £50,000 prize for novel which tells 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/21/jenny-erpenbeck-michael-hofmann-win-2024-international-booker-prize-kairos

 

THOMAS MCGUANE ON SMALL-TOWN AMERICA

The author discusses his story “Thataway.

https://apple.news/AYfo15bNWQye1o-lB2LuHLw

At last, a midlife-crisis novel that’s not about a man

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-05-15/review-miranda-july-all-fours-novel

 

ALICE MUNRO REINVIGORATED THE SHORT STORY

Working with the author, who has died, at ninety-two, was both a thrill and a lesson in intentionality

https://apple.news/AWnUXtbIZQneL-y0mbaIrxQ

 

Rebecca F Kuang: ‘I like to write to my friends in the style of Joan Didion’

Rachel Cooke

The author of bestseller Yellowface on her agent’s fears about publishing the novel, the joys of a social media purge and being a workaholic who gets bored easily

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/04/rebecca-f-kuang-yellowface-joan-didion-poppy-war-babel

 

Paul Auster, American author of The New York Trilogy, dies aged 77

The writer of The New York Trilogy, Leviathan and 4 3 2 1 – known for his stylised postmodernist fiction – has died from complications of lung cancer

Here, contemporaries pay tribute to his life and work: 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/may/01/a-literary-voice-for-the-ages-paul-auster-remembered-by-ian-mcewan-joyce-carol-oates-and-more

 

Two Poems, four years in 

detention: the Chinese dissident 

who smuggled his writing out of prison

My poems were written in anger after Tiananmen Square. But what motivates most prison writing is a fear of forgetting. Today I am free, but the regime has never stopped its war on words

by Liao Yiwu

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/09/liao-yiwu-chinese-dissident-who-smuggled-his-writing-out-of-prison

  

 

In Praise of Pulitzer Prize-Winner Jayne Anne Phillips

Jonathan Corcoran on the Teacher Who Taught Him That Writing Begins Far From the Page

https://lithub.com/in-praise-of-pulitzer-prize-winner-jayne-anne-phillips/

 

UK audiobook downloads up 17% last year, Publishers Association data shows

Audiobooks are fast becoming ‘a major route to market for consumers of books’, the trade body says

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/07/uk-audiobook-downloads-up-17-last-year-publishers-association-data-shows