Required Reading: September 11, 2015

Required Reading: September 11, 2015

“Required Reading” is an ongoing series, in which we write about what has captured our attention lately on and outside the web.

It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful, early-autumn weekend here in Ohio. We’ll be taking advantage of sunny, 70-degree days. We hope your weekend is every bit as pleasurable – and that you make some time for reading, too.

Jessica has been investigating short fiction for our seminars as she settles into her Books@Work position. A favorite has been “Your Duck is My Duck,” by Deborah Eisenberg  (in The O. Henry Prize Stories: The Best Stories of the Year 2013 and originally published in Fence). She describes it as

Puppenwerkstatt, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1940 [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

Puppenwerkstatt, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1940 [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons


“a dreamy yet gripping story. The protagonist, an artist whose day job has been draining her creative energy, is invited by two wealthy patrons to stay at their beach house in a never-specified but somewhat tropical and economically struggling locale. Little does she know, like several others, she has been invited to serve as a buffer of sorts as her patrons’ marriage bears the strain of infidelity. Though she eventually finds her way out of the situation without losing too much, others lose more. I’m still chewing on the story’s seeming paradoxes and its technicolor atmosphere has yet to leave me. A fabulous piece.”

Ann spent Labor Day Weekend helping her son move to a new city – lots of hours in the car. To pass the time, she writes

“Influenced by his recent The Buried Giant, I chose to revisit a few Kazuo Ishiguro classics. Together we listened to Never Let Me Go, a deeply affecting dystopian coming of age novel published in 2005.  Set in late 20th-century England, the book explores the friendship among three young clones raised as part of a National Donation Program to provide vital organs to others.  Ishiguro’s beautiful language and his haunting exploration of the arts as a window into the soul raise timeless questions about what it means to be human. Listening to the novel made the trip fly by, and the story stayed with me long past the final moments of the narration.”

Felix has been reading KIND founder Daniel Lubetzky’s book, Do the Kind Thing. Felix reflects,

“Lubetzky makes the compelling case that communicating your social mission can in fact be detrimental to your business. In his earlier business, Lubetzky’s real driving force was his social mission of bringing together Israeli and Palestinian farmers and business people–thus creating a deeper understanding and appreciation through mutual dependency. However, Lubetzky claims that one big mistake he made was leading with his social mission, only eventually realizing that people bought the best sun-dried tomato paste they could find independent of the reasoning behind it. Once your product is attractive people will love you for the higher purpose. I’m intrigued.”

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, 1897 [Public Domain] via The British Library

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, 1897 [Public Domain] via The British Library

As for me, I’ve been endlessly entertained this week by a Vox article titled “I love the Victorian era. So I decided to live in it” – in which the writer explains that she has chosen to live as a Victorian woman in present day America. In other words, she wears a corset and forgoes electricity at home, but isn’t exactly in danger of succumbing to consumption.  No few people have responded to the essay. My favorite? Flavorwire’s Sarah Seltzer with “It Happened to Me: Sometimes I Hear Maniacal Laughter from the Locked Tower Room.” Seltzer writes from Brontë heroine Jane Eyre’s perspective, and, if Victorian novels are your thing, her parodic response is laugh-out-loud funny. (Incidentally, all of the Brontës died of tuberculosis.)

Elsewhere on the Internet:

LitHub brings us Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (a Books@Work favorite) – drawn as a Peanuts comic strip.

Vulture tells us “How the Tiny Graywolf Press Became a Big Player in Book Publishing.” I love Graywolf Press’s award-winning and innovative nonfiction, so I was intrigued by this peek into how they work.

The ever-masterful Jill Lepore reconsiders Benjamin Franklin.

NPR Books interviews Ursula Le Guin.

These book jacket GIFs are just beautiful.

Further Reading:

Required Reading: August 14, 2015

Required Reading: July 31, 2015

Required Reading: July 22, 2015

Image: Barthélemy d’Eyck, Still Life with Books in a Niche, c.1442-45, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


Share:
Cecily Erin Hill

Cecily Erin Hill

Cecily Hill is the Project Director, NEH for All at the National Humanities Alliance and former member of the Books@Work team.