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This, along with A Visit From the Goon Squad, is one of those contemporary novels that even I can't believe I haven't read yet. I adore Karen Russell's short stories and initially this dragged along for me because I wanted it to be the same bite-sized narrative I was used to, but now I'm really settling in and loving it. It's always fun to pick apart a universally-beloved novel that is overrated, but this is not one of those times. It is as good as everyone said it was.
Roxane Gay wrote an excellent piece on the feminist novel. She has been battling haters on Twitter all week long, so read and enjoy and send positive vibes.
UCLA has made Susan Sontag's entire digital archive available online, including the entire contents of her Mac Book and her e-mail account. She was on Sephora's customer listserv, so there's that. I am going to waste so many hours on this.
Karen Russell's short story collection St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised by Wolves is going to be adapted by ABC into a tv show. Obviously it will focus on the titular story. Perhaps this will finally give me the motivation I need to read the book.
Earlier this week I posted on Katherine Howe's new book The Penguin Book of Witches, and she did an interview with The Toast that you might enjoy if you're interested in the book.
Willa Cather is an author whose work is so inextricably linked to a specific time, place, and culture; even though I really enjoy her writing, I always wonder if a more diverse audience appreciates it as much as I am able to. Her novels are really the ultimate Great Plains fiction, providing a fictional account of the Scandinavian immigrant experience in the Midwest. For fans of Karen Russell, recall her utterly sinister story "Proving Up" from Vampires in the Lemon Grove, which I loved as it immediately brought to mind Willa Cather, albeit a more macabre version.
Read moreHBO has been on a long adaptation rights tear, and the latest addition to their stable of literary source material is Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy. Unlike so many of their other exciting literary adaptation projects that are currently languishing in HBO purgatory, this one has a director attached: Darren Aronofsky.
The annual literary issue of the New Yorker is out, and includes some really stellar fiction, with contributions by the likes of Alison Bechdel, Rachel Kushner, Karen Russell, Miranda July, and Haruki Murakami, along with a great Talk of the Town piece on the #YesAllWomen movement by Rebecca Mead. Interestingly, it looks like the fiction this year is dominated by female contributors. There is also a long profile on John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars, for those of you who, like me, don't keep up on YA fiction.
Finally, BookExpo America was last week. The biggest news story to come out of the event was widespread criticism of the lack of diversity among panelists. For anyone interested in everything else that happened at BEA, here is a very nice round-up of summaries and blog posts, mostly written by librarians and book bloggers.
Embarrassing as it is to admit now, I was a short story skeptic for the better part of my literate life. I am not an English teacher and really have no proposal for improvement, but I think my hatred stemmed from the way short stories were incorporated into English curriculum (i.e., poorly). As an adult, I finally dipped my toes in the short story water with George Saunders, and shortly thereafter, Karen Russell. She makes for a good liaison in that she has published both short story collections as well as a novel and an e-book novella; whatever your fancy, she will help convert you. I started with Vampires in the Lemon Grove, her most recent story collection that was picked for our book club. It yielded one of our best discussions, and surprisingly everyone had a different favorite. I have yet to dig in to her other work, but I have a copy of her first story collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves in my stack, and I’m anxious to get my hands on the much-lauded Swamplandia. I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to read her e-book, as I’m a book fetishist and a total luddite when it comes to e-readers, but I love her writing enough to figure it out. So then Karen Russell will have converted me into a lover of short stories AND a user of e-readers, two impressive feats. Did I mention she is young, beautiful, a prolific writer (4 books in 6 years) and now a MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ recipient?
