The Millions

At the Guardian Book Blog, Anthony Horowitz wonders “who’s helping who in the cover blurb game.” We of course recommend pairing his article with Alan Levinovitz’s Brief History of Blurbs from last year.

Chinua Achebe, best known for his novel Things Fall Apart, is working on a memoir to be titled There Was a Country.

Due to some outcry, Robert Darnton comes to the defense of the New York Public Library’s proposed expansion and revamping.

James Wood’s New Yorker review of Laurent Binet’s HHhH, makes note of the sections of the book that were cut by editors (and name-checks The Millions). Here they are if you want to read them and learn more about the context behind the cuts.

In a neat little essay for Vouched Books, Kyle Winkler advocates indexing as a means of tempering the “fuckstorm of reading.”

Leaving the Atocha Station author Ben Lerner interviews Threshold Songs author Peter Gizzi in what can only be described as a poetry explosion.

Carlos Fuentes, public intellectual and pivotal literary figure in not only Latin American but all of literature, passed away yesterday at the age of 83. Publisher’s Weekly recently interviewed the author about his forthcoming novel, Vlad.

The text of Salman Rushdie’s PEN World Voices lecture on liberty and censorship has been published on the New Yorker‘s website.

The Common will be celebrating its first year of publication later this month at NYU’s Carter Journalism institute. The celebrations will include a reading from Stephen O’Connor and a performance by the Dog House Band, aka that literary rock group consisting of Sven Birkerts,  James Wood, and other writerly musicians.

According to a study cited in The Guardian, contemporary authors are less likely to be influenced by classic literature than previous generations of writers.

Aharon Appelfeld, a prolific Israeli novelist, has won the Independent Prize for international fiction for his latest book, Blooms of Darkness. Check out our guide to this year’s award’s shortlist.

Now that NPR has begun fact checking his work, it’s come to light that David Sedaris is a liar. Or, he sort of embellishes. His work is ‘realish.’ So basically, he tells stories. On NPR.  Which is feeling pretty sensitive abut the line between truth and truthiness after the Mike Daisey upset.