Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today's stories:
Google is set to launch its first e-book reader, the iriver Story HD, this weekend. With the device's not-exactly-"high-definition" black on gray, e-ink display, Jacket Copy ponders what that "HD" could stand for—"Happy Documents," "Hot Diggity"?
HuffPo Books readers reveal the novels, seemingly loved by all, that they, quite honestly, hated.
Meanwhile, Flavorwire rounds up a new cast of beloved books, with ten "decideldy highbrow" literary tomes that actually make great beach reads.
While he would "never advise anyone to give up on their book," Iowa Writers' Workshop alumnus Anthony Marra makes the case for surrender over perseverance when it comes to that novel in perpetual revision. Marra's essay is part of the 75th Project, an blog-essay series celebrating the Workshop's seventy-fifth anniversary. (The Rumpus)
Vendela Vida, whose novel The Lovers was just released in paperback, discusses her approach to storytelling with the Guardian. "I was tired of reading novels by women in which the men could act as badly as they wanted, while the female characters had to please and enchant. I wanted to try something different."
Despite her reputation as a "difficult writer," Gertrude Stein's children's books may be perfect for early readers. "It turns out," Harvard professor Stephen Burt writes in the Boston Globe, "Stein was performing some of the same experiments that we now know children perform as they learn to speak, to assemble narratives, and to understand the world."
A Washington State school board reverses its ban on Sherman Alexie's novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, in which the teenage protagonist deals with racism, death, and poverty. (News Tribune)
