The novelist on his new collection of journalism, why he regrets criticising Sally Rooney and how he’s never shaken off the influence of JG Ballard“I’ll see your eidolon next Tuesday,” writes Will Self, 61, when I email to arrange a video call to discuss his new collection of journalism, Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021, which is centred on the concern (as he later told me, or my on-screen spirit-image) that “people are dumbing down their entire response to their own culture by their unfettered use of social media”. Self’s 26 previous books include Umbrella, shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2012, and its sequels Shark and Phone, the latter a single 624-page paragraph which the Telegraph called an “epic anti-tweet”. Speaking from his home in south London, he said he liked the description “because the book was a deliberate attempt to call people’s attention to what was being lost by the digital. I don’t think the Umbrella trilogy is that hard to read at all; it’s only hard to read in contrast to a tweet. By Donald Trump!”How did you pick the pieces in Why Read?Until fairly recently, certainly since 2001, I probably wrote an average of 150,000 words of journalism every year, so there’s a vast amount to choose from. My New York editor said that in the age of the web, collections like this need a theme or else readers feel they’re just getting a grab bag they could’ve sourced themselves. So the emphasis fell on the impact on reading and writing of what I choose to call... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2022-11-26 18:00:32 UTC ]
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There are decades of great comics to read about Ant-Man and the Wasp. Here’s your reading list for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2023-02-15 11:32:00 UTC ]
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Davon Loeb’s debut memoir The In-Betweens follows the story of his childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood as a biracial young man growing up between various cultures, races, and identities. Loeb grows up with a Black mother and a white, Jewish father. In school, he is one of the few Black... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-02-09 12:00:00 UTC ]
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‘A White Heron’ is one of the best-known short stories by the American writer Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909). Published in 1886 in the collection A White Heron and Other Stories, the story is about a young girl who is approached by a hunter who offers her money if she will […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2023-02-08 18:00:40 UTC ]
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Nothing prepared me for revisiting the most painful times of my life – then being criticised for it. We need industry-wide guidelines to helpI called her Terri The World Gets. She was the outward-facing me, the woman I’d spent decades curating. And Terri The World Gets was about to be rocketed... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-02-08 08:00:10 UTC ]
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Following a rocky release, it looks like Overwatch 2 is starting to hit a stride. On Monday, Blizzard detailed all the content that’s coming with the game’s latest season, and there’s plenty here for fans to be excited about. To start, season three will introduce the franchise’s first crossover... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-02-06 20:45:42 UTC ]
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Filippo Bernardini impersonated agents and publishers to obtain works from writers including Atwood, McEwan and RooneyAn Italian man has admitted to stealing more than 1,000 unpublished manuscripts, including from distinguished authors, solving a mystery that had puzzled the literary world for... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-01-07 10:51:29 UTC ]
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Beatrice Alemagna’s “You Can’t Kill Snow White,” a picture book for older kids, mines the brutal envy that underpins the original Brothers Grimm tale. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-12-16 17:24:59 UTC ]
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Sony announced the release window today for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the sequel to 2018's Marvel's Spider-Man and 2020's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. The PlayStation 5 exclusive will launch in the fall of 2023.Insomniac Games’ sequel continues the stories of Peter Parker and Miles Morales as they... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-12-15 18:51:23 UTC ]
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What the hell are we doing? All the best things are shutting down and people are out here using computers to make children’s books? Not to get too Jeff Goldblum on you, but just because you build a tool to do something doesn’t make it interesting or worthy. To wit, a product designer named... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-12-13 15:19:23 UTC ]
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Bob McGrath, an actor, musician and children's author widely known for his portrayal of one of the first regular characters on the children's show Sesame Street, has died at the age of 90. Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2022-12-05 03:00:34 UTC ]
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S&S has decided not to extend the deal's deadline, which prevents PRH from appealing the court's decision to block the merger. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-11-21 14:58:02 UTC ]
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With the purchase agreement between Paramount and Penguin Random House set to expire, reports from multiple media sources say that Simon & Schuster's parent company will let the deadline lapse, thereby killing the deal. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-11-21 05:00:00 UTC ]
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If you’re a literary genius, you’ve got it easy—right? Wrong. Even Jane Austen, indisputably one of the greatest novelists in the English language, spent years struggling to be published and became so dispirited that there were moments when she almost walked away. The story begins with an... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-11-18 09:54:04 UTC ]
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Beyond Wakanda Forever, comic book writers like Evan Narcisse are extending the reach of the Black Panther’s story. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2022-11-11 10:00:00 UTC ]
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“I’d never read anything like it,” says the actor and director, whose memoir “All About Me!” is newly out in paperback. “It was hysterically funny and incredibly moving at the same time. It’s like Gogol stuck a pen in his heart, and it didn’t even go through his mind on its way to the page.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-11-10 10:00:12 UTC ]
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'Friends' star Matthew Perry has apologized for his putdown of Keanu Reeves in his new memoir and says he should have used his own name instead. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-10-27 16:58:34 UTC ]
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‘The Man I Killed’ is a story from The Things They Carried, a 1990 collection of linked short stories by the American writer Tim O’Brien. The collection focuses on a platoon of American soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. As the title of this short story suggests, ‘The Man I […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-10-17 14:00:42 UTC ]
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‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ is one of the best-known short stories by Flannery O’Connor (1925-64), who produced a string of powerful stories during her short life. First published in the collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find in 1955, the story is about an American family […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-09-26 14:00:41 UTC ]
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Hilary Mantel, the best-selling British author known for her award-winning Wolf Hall historical trilogy, died on Thursday at the age of 70, her publisher said on Twitter on Friday. Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2022-09-23 11:29:52 UTC ]
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Mantel was credited with reenergizing historical fiction with “Wolf Hall” and two sequels about the 16th-century English powerbroker Thomas Cromwell. Continue reading at The Huffington Post
[ The Huffington Post | 2022-09-23 10:42:20 UTC ]
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