We reported yesterday on Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer win for her novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. We read with great pleasure an interview with the author full of pearls of insight. Here’s Egan on the caprices of fashion: “If you’ve been around as long as I have, watching the literary scene, then you know that who’s in and who’s out changes by the year. It’s really a very fluid situation that requires that the person who is having the good luck now isn’t having it a year or two from now.”
Here’s a milestone in Australian publishing history - the first graphic novel on an indigenous theme by an indigenous writer/illustrator. The first of the Ubby’s Underdogs trilogy - The Legend of the Phoenix Dragon - is set in the richly multi-ethnic Broome of the late 1940s. Its central character is the indigenous teenager Ubby and her gang of friends. It’s the work of young indigenous artist Brenton E McKenna.
Last week we featured diaries. Here’s a website that publishes daily extracts from that leviathan of the form, the 18th-century Brit Samuel Pepys - enthralling reading. Speaking of reading, when you’re reading a great novel, have you ever felt like you’re a different person?
Frank Sinatra had a few, but then again, too few to mention. This compilation of regrets is in fact an anthology of unwritten novels. Of course, regret can be devastating, but its legacy can be positive, according to a mental health specialist.
Some more quick links: We love Eastern European book cover design. Here’s a book that celebrates just that. What better way to create portraits of writers than to use their own words. And finally, here’s poet David Kirby on how to read contemporary poetry.