Riot New Media

The Exposing of Elena Ferrante

For the past several years, Ferrante has been the darling of literary fiction. Her quartet of books known has The Neopolitan Novels have sold exceptionally well, especially for fiction in translation. And her real identity (Elena Ferrante is a pen-name) has been the subject of rumor and speculation.

But last week, The New York Review of Books published an investigation that seems to have discovered her real identity. The tone and attitude, not to mention the intrusion into her financial records, though, have much of the literary world unhappy with the NYRB. I have to say I agree. Ferrante is now a genuine literary figure, and as such is part of history. In due time, I think knowing who she was would have been an inevitable part of literary history, but how and why and when we do history matters. In this regard, the NYRB doesn’t seem like an historian, it seems like paparazzi.
New Dan Brown Novel Coming in Fall 2017

Dan Brown announced last week that his next novel, called Origin, will be published in September 2017. It will again feature Robert Langdon, this time involving a plot that will center on humankind’s “two biggest questions.” Presumably, one of those questions will be about something in the area of the origin of the universe and/or humans. You don’t, however, need to be a symbologist to figure out that it will also be about history, art, and a series of delightfully implausible clues.

The National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35

Each year, the National Book Foundation honors five debut novelists under the age of 35 who show exceptional promise. The cash value of the award is only $1,000, but what it provides in status is incalculable. And it is always an extremely interesting list. This year’s honorees are:

Brit Bennett, author of The Mothers
Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing
Greg Jackson, author of Prodigals
S. Li, author of Transoceanic Lights
Thomas Pierce, author of Hall of Small Mammals

This week in books is sponsored by Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig.

Four Writers Among 2016 MacArthur Winners

The MacArthur Foundation awarded its prestigious fellowships last week (the so-called ‘genius’ awards), and four writers were among the 23 winners.

Gene Yan Lueng, graphic novelist and cartoonist

Claudia Rankine, poet

Maggie Nelson, non-fiction

Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, playwright

I’ve read at least something by all four of these writers, and from what I have read, all are extraordinarily deserving. Here’s looking forward to what they do next.

Google Play Books Grows Up

Google has been a sleeping giant in the world of ebooks, just by virtue of controlling the operating system on hundreds of millions of smartphones in use right now. To this point, Google Play Books hasn’t been much more than a search-and-find store, but with the launch of Discover, Google is trying to make its ebook store into a recommendation powerhouse.

Using the enormous amount it knows about your reading habits, Google Play Books Discover will recommend both books and news articles and essays based on your reading habits. Read a book recently about baseball? It might then recommend popular baseball-related stories from the web. If it sees that you read a lot online about movies, it might suggest a new book about Hollywood. You get the idea.

It isn’t leaving the recommendations completely up to algorithms, though. Discover will have robust recommendations chosen by editors as well. Not even Google, the masters of machine learning, think human input is out of date.

Bernie Sanders Gets into YA

Bernie Sanders’s Our Revolution, which is scheduled to come out just after the election, is also being adapted for readers ages 12-18. It’s not exactly clear what will change from the version for adults, but it makes sense that Sanders, who was most popular among younger Democratic voters, would be looking toward the next generation of voters. The YA version of Our Revolution will be released November 17.

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This Week in Books is sponsored by Afterward by Jennifer Mathieu:

When Caroline’s little brother is kidnapped, his subsequent rescue leads to the discovery of Ethan, a teenager who has been living with the kidnapper since he was a young child himself. Caroline can’t help but wonder what Ethan knows about everything that happened to her brother, who is not readjusting well to life at home. And although Ethan is desperate for a friend, he can’t see Caroline without experiencing a resurgence of traumatic memories. But after the media circus surrounding the kidnappings departs their small Texas town, both Caroline and Ethan find that they need a friend–and their best option just might be each other.