The Chicago Sun Times’ Mary Houlihan catches up with Nami Mun about the experiences from her past that inspired her to write—leaving home at age 13, getting her high school and college diplomas on the same day, devouring the classics, her years as a private investigator, and much more.
“Daniel Pink is one of the more energetic members of the growing tribe of business writers-speakers-bloggers who, like the ubiquitous Malcolm Gladwell, plunder the work of economists, scientists and psychologists to attack well-established business assumptions. Mr. Pink is known for public presentations in which he delivers a consistently upbeat message: that the miserable age of 20th-century management is over, that the tyranny of organizational charts and spreadsheets is behind us, and that we are now entering more sun-splashed climes, where creativity flourishes and businesses treat employees as human beings, not machine parts…[T]hese lessons are worth repeating, and if more companies feel emboldened to follow Mr. Pink's advice, then so much the better.” more...
“[Drive] offers practical advice that is all the more useful because these core psychological principles are rarely translated into management...We can expect a whole new workplace—and an entirely new definition of work.” more...
Nathaniel Rich, author of The Mayor’s Tongue, mourns the death of J.D. Salinger and speculates about the work that may emerge from his passing.“This very moment a giant U-Haul truck, filled with paper, may be trundling down I-95 toward the offices of The New Yorker, or Harold Ober Associates, or Little, Brown.” Get excited.
An Education scored three Oscar nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay (Nick Hornby), Best Actress (Carey Mulligan), and Best Picture. See the full list of nominees and watch the 82nd annual Oscar Awards on Sunday, March 7th.
The ChicagoTribune’s Julia Keller interviews Jami Attenberg and raves about The Melting Season: “Attenberg’s third book mesmerizes…At times, The Melting Season resembles Thelma and Louise, the 1991 film that is now the quintessence of road trips with women at the wheel...But Attenberg's narrative voice—a lean, straight-ahead, deadpan tone that cuts cleanly through Catherine's hypocrisy and self-pity like a laser-guided strike—makes The Melting Season singular and disquieting.” more...
"Bestseller Mosley scores a clean knockout in his excellent second mystery featuring New York City PI Leonid McGill (after 2009’s The Long Fall). Still striving to atone for some of the lives he’s ruined, the 54-year-old McGill laments that there are 'no straight lines in the life or labors of the private detective.' Instead, crises crowd him at every turn…The ex-boxer has an eclectic group in his corner, including computer whiz Tiny 'Bug' Bateman, but McGill is the one taking the blows and meting out punishment in this contemporary noir gem." more...
Meghan O’Rourke writes an essay for The New Yorkeron grief, asking, “Is there a better way to be bereaved?” O’Rourke discusses the shortcomings of the five stages of grieving in Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ seminal On Death and Dying, and questions the disappearance of public mourning rituals in the West. This essay is part of O’Rourke’s memoir, The Long Goodbye, which will be published by Riverhead in 2011.
Doug Dorst's (author of Alive in Necropolis) “Little Reptiles” was recently published by 5 Chapters—"Little Reptiles" is just one of many fantastic stories in Dorst's forthcoming collection, The Surf Guru (July 15). 5 Chapters is a website that puts out a short story in five parts each week. Have you ever heard of a boomslang, galliwasp, argus monitor, daboia, or gharial? Dorst enlightens us.
