The Paris Review Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

The Paris Review

The Paris Review staff’s favorite books read in 2021 include Natalia Ginzburg’s ‘The Dry Heart,’ Jane Unrue’s ‘Life of a Star,’ Nona Fernández’s ‘The Twilight Zone,’ Percival Everett’s ‘The Trees,’ and much, much more. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/12/17/our-staffs-favorite-books-of-2021/

The Paris Review

“Working to question the era’s subjective speed thrills, Sinclair teaches us bit by bit to see oil capitalism’s sheer scale and corruption, with attention to the gaping inequalities at its core.” Read @MichaelTondre on Upton Sinclair’s novel, novel Oil!: https://t.co/bi3ehUtPlH

The Paris Review

“The voice does go up in a poem. It is an address, even if it is to oneself.” —Derek Walcott https://t.co/DGrEvxHaMa

The Paris Review

The final episode of the podcast is here: listen to a reenactment of Joan Didion’s Art of Fiction interview, @Bud_Smith’s “Violets,” @jerichobrown’s “Hero,” and Natalie Scenters-Zapico’s “The Trick Is to Pretend” as read by @phoebe_bridgers. https://www.theparisreview.org/podcast/6060/episode-223-a-strange-way-to-live https://t.co/HttAgl8VND

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The Paris Review

“My first real lover was dumb, virile, hilarious—I didn’t trust a word he said. Certainly nothing he recommended. This is why, for years, I stayed away from his favorite book, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.” Sophie Dess for the Review’s Review: https://t.co/0ZRvRhpFkT

The Paris Review

“What really sets Tice Cin’s novel ‘Keeping the House’ apart is its snaking, shifting form, filled with constant interruptions by Turkish Cypriot words and their English definitions.” What the staff and contributors of ‘The Paris Review’ recommend: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/09/23/the-reviews-review-reproducing-bodies/

The Paris Review

"At the start of Elif Batuman’s Either/Or, the narrator asks a simple question: What is 'good' fiction?" @thereal_ckj on Elif Batuman's new novel "Either/Or" for The Review's Review. Both reviews this week discuss 1996-centric art work: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/06/02/on-de-la-soul-and-elif-batuman/#more-159969

The Paris Review

“The first novel I read by Jamaica Kincaid was Annie John, the first novel she wrote. She drafted it—as I recently learned from a long-awaited Art of Fiction interview conducted by Darryl Pinckney—out loud in the bath, while pregnant with her daughter.” https://t.co/lKC9rX250h

The Paris Review

“In my symbology, there are safe totems, good things, and there are bad ones, warnings … A goat must always be loved, and helped. If a character is reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, they are an agent of evil who may cause harm or disruption.” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/04/04/how-do-we-stop-repeating-ourselves-a-conversation-with-caren-beilin/

The Paris Review

“There is a short passage in Ethan Frome that I return to, sometimes, when I feel my curiosity becoming caustic, when my fascination turns invasive, when I begin to run my ghost meter over someone’s life.” @ArnoldFriend6 on visiting The Mount. https://t.co/hob5abRxxK