January 2012
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Salinger never wanted or needed me to stick up for... →
Kristopher Jansma on secrets, stories, and J.D. Salinger.
This post is part of our “Best of 2011” series, which highlights exceptional original pieces that have been published on The Millions this year.
December 2011
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“Spurred by a sudden and quixotic interest in what constitutes genre, I developed...”
– Kim Wright, “The Genre Games.”
This post is part of our “Best of 2011” series, which highlights exceptional original pieces that have been published on The Millions this year.
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To my mind, Harold Bloom is not so much the... →
Matt Hanson’s review of Harold Bloom’s The Anatomy of Influence
This post is part of our “Best of 2011” series, which highlights exceptional original pieces that have been published on The Millions this year.
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“If I am reading Said correctly, he is associating lateness with both...”
– Sonya Chung considers Edward Said and Julian Barnes in her discussion of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa for our Post-40 Bloomers series.
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My Favorite Time of Year:
When NYT Magazine’s Sam Anderson wraps up his year in marginalia:
On Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84:
“Has any author made more fictional phones ring?”
On Joan Didion’s “The White Album”:
“People who accuse Didion of being humorless are insane: she’s hilarious, in a v. strange way.”
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My own personal copy of Cesar Aira’s Ghosts is full of the check marks,...
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The Alternative, the Underground, the... →
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And that's a wrap!
Thank you all so much for following along with our annual Year in Reading feature.
There’s nothing quite like a solid, personal recommendation, as Nick Moran writes in his wrap up:
We also recognize that it’s becoming easier than ever to rely on algorithms and lists for one’s book recommendations – and while there are some treasures to be found through such means, there is nothing ...
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“The easy money for a critic is to rail on about the corporate pablum of the...”
– Michelle Dean, “What Harry Potter Knows”
This post is part of our “Best of 2011” series, which highlights exceptional original pieces that have been published on The Millions this year.
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If you read one article on racial (particularly...
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“For the most part I establish a loose plan for the year that dips into unread...”
– Buzz Poole’s Year In Reading
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“The LA Times called her “The finest British writer alive.” Julian Barnes called...”
– Ellis Avery goes crazy for Penelope Fitzgerald in her Year In Reading article.
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An Other People Podcast with our own Edan Lepucki →
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“I was given a copy of the British philosopher Gillian Rose’s memoir Love’s Work...”
– Belinda McKeon’s Year In Reading
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“So many people have praised Christopher so effusively, I want to complicate the...”
– Katha Pollitt on Christopher Hitchens’ flaws and alleged sexism.
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“Why do we read?” That was the journal prompt given one day to seniors at the...”
– Brooke Hauser’s Year In Reading
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“Imagine Ibsen’s Peer Gynt rewritten four-handedly by a bisexual Joyce and a...”
– Jean-Christophe Valtat’s Year in Reading
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“Instead of A Year in Reading, can I call this my Year of Books Half-Read? Lately...”
– Natasha Wimmer’s Year In Reading
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“NOX’s intelligence, sadness, and wry humor alone might be enough, but its form...”
– Jane Alison’s Year in Reading. Fun Fact: Jane, one of my creative writing teachers while at the University of Miami, was the one of the best overall teachers I’ve ever had in any discipline.
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John Ashbery has a new poem out, and it is... →
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MY YEAR IN READING
bradlisti:
I’ve shared my Year in Reading over at The Millions, a terrific literary site.
-BL
Brad Listi went rogue this year!
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Behold: a museum of my failures, an atlas of... →
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“Forgetting to bring a book with me constitutes an emergency. I’ve turned back on...”
– Emily St. John Mandel.
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“It’s no secret how crazy the concept of ‘gendered’ writing makes me. What, Jane...”
– Elissa Schappell, Author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls, check out her interview with BOMB in this long read. (via bombmagazine)
You might want to complement this fantastic interview with Deena Drewis’ eye opening piece “What We Call what Women Write.” It’s...
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Kindle Proof Your Novel in Seven Easy Steps!
Use Color
Illustrate, Illustrate, Illustrate
Play with Text, Typeface, and White Space
Run with Scissors
Go Aleatory
Put it in a Box
Pile on End Matter
This post is part of our “Best of 2011” series, which highlights exceptional original pieces that have been published on The Millions this year.
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Electric Lit interviews our founding editor C. Max...
Electric Lit: We’re currently in the season of year-end lists. What makes The Year in Reading different than other lists? And what do you hope it will accomplish?
Max: The year-end list has become a cliché and is very obviously now little more than a symptom of our cultural obsession with keeping score and ranking everything. It’s a fun pastime, one that we at The Millions are not above engaging in, but at year end, amid the onslaught, it becomes somewhat meaningless and feels transparently like a marketing boondoggle to support the promotional-book-cover-sticker-and-blurb industry. There are so many best of the year lists that everything is the best (and the worst). So, how can we have some year-end fun while still extracting something meaningful from the effort? To echo some comments I’ve made in past years when introducing the series, among the chief arguments leveled against such “best of” lists is the way they posit an illusory pinnacle of achievement and quality. By means of a grand consensus, the list smooths over natural and exciting variations in individual taste. But true discoveries are often made not by finding out what everybody liked, but by getting from one trusted fellow reader a recommendation that strikes a nerve or piques an interest. And rather than hearing from just one trusted fellow reader, we try to give you 70 or so each year. The cup overfloweth.
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“The days are short and few. Stay up late with John Cheever. Contemplate your...”
– Parul Sehgal
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“Abbott Awaits isn’t a long novel, but it captures a larger slice of life than...”
– Christopher Boucher on Chris Bachelder’s novel Abbott Awaits.
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“I figured I might write a play in a bar, as if it had never been done before, as...”
– From Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, chosen by Alex Shakar for his Year In Reading 