July 2012
June 2012
“A good writer wants from us — or has no right to ask more than — intelligence, good faith and time.”
—John Jeremiah Sullivan, in consideration of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!
Heads up: On Monday we'll be posting the second half of the great 2012 books preview. It's like Christmas in July! But with books instead of some strange intruder dressed in red velvet. Because it's too hot for velvet right now, if we're being honest. But yes! Monday!
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Is Little Century a “woman’s book?” I asked myself this as I read, mostly lamenting that it probably is, from a marketing perspective. It’s a book about a girl, after all, and far fewer men read books about girls than women read books about boys; the math on that is pretty clear.
But it’s also a book about insiders and outsiders, friendship, forgiveness, love of the land, male mid-life ambition, corporatism, journalistic integrity, racial prejudice. (It is not, thankfully, a book about a girl who finds her boy: the ending, which I won’t give away completely, is quite satisfying in the way it allows us to choose-our-own-adventure). It’s a book with both a big heart and a big mind, not to mention a generous soul.
” —Sonya Chung on the latest entry to her Post-40 Bloomers series: Anna Keesey’s Little Century.
“Strayed finds the worm buried at the bottom of a pile of dirt, pulls it out like a thread, and slices it open. The innards of the innards: that’s where she starts. As Sugar puts it, “This is where we must dig.”
— Jessica Gross on Tiny Beautiful Things, the new book by Cheryl Strayed
“But like prophets and seers, writers are driven by a force, an irresistible desire to give to the inner impulses, the material form of sound, color and word. This desire cannot be held back by laws, tradition, or religious restrictions. The song that must be sung will be sung; and if banned, they will hum it; and if humming is banned, they will dance it; and if dancing is banned, they will sing it silently to themselves or to the ears of those near, waiting for the appropriate moment to explode.”
— Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o speaks at The Sunday Times Literary Awards
“The first time I read Nora Ephron, I was in a bookstore in Kathmandu and I was twenty-two and very lonely. I picked up a pink copy of “Heartburn” and sat on the floor of the shop next to my enormous and filthy backpack and I didn’t get up again until I’d finished the book. I no longer felt lonesome.”
— Ariel Levy recalls the first time she read Nora Ephron. Links to this and many more essays on the late Ephron here.
