Sasha Frere-Jones recommends The Book of Disquiet and other books, but more importantly, The Book of Disquiet. (I love this book and started a website in the mid-2000’s with various writer-types reacting to passages from Pessoa’s book. Here it is. Time to see if the engine turns over?)

In the comments section of SFJ’s post, Helen DeWitt recommends reading Calvino's Invisible Cities untranslated along with a list of books you’ll never be able to find, unless you live near a library. If you’re depressed and you live nowhere near a library, this is a non-reading matter that you can address toward ameliorating your depression. 

Next year’s selections. Some duds, some gems. I’ll probably go with Salvage the Bones, but we’ll see.

http://winkbooks.tumblr.com/

Books are not dead! The newest thing in the digital age are solid paper books. Not all books deserve to be printed on paper, but some books do, and these are the books that Wink celebrates. Every weekday Wink reviews one remarkable book that demonstrates what paper books can do. This might be an attractive oversized book that wows your coffee table, a craft book that includes materials to get you started, or a how-to book sporting an unusually handy binding. It could be a pop-up book, an atlas with pull-out maps, a stunning picture book for children, an unusual tome printed on exquisite paper. Or it could be a hardback graphic novel whose illustrations pop better in ink than in pixels. 

Against Enthusiasm: The epidemic of niceness in online book culture - by Jacob Silverman

…Whereas critics once performed one role in print and another in life—Rebecca West could savage someone’s book in the morning and dine with him in the evening—social media has collapsed these barriers. Moreover, social media’s centrifugal forces of approbation—retweets, likes, favorites, and the self-consciousness that accompanies each public utterance—make any critique stick out sorely.

Not to share in the lit world’s online slumber party can seem strange and mark a person as unlikable or (a worse offense in this age) unfollowable. This kind of rationalization might mostly take place in our lizard brains, but I’d argue that it’s the reason why the literary world—a famously insular community to begin with—has become mired in clubbiness and glad-handing…

In Celebration of Enthusiasm - by Emma Straub

The writer Jacob Silverman wrote a piece for Slate today called ‘Against Enthusiasm.’ The essay mentions me by name in the very first sentence, and uses me throughout as a symbol of the ‘epidemic of niceness’ in the online universe. What is particularly hilarious to me is that I read Silverman’s piece directly after asking all of my Twitter followers to ‘Like’ my official Facebook page. 

I found the article both interesting and funny (I do love to be made an example of!), but I want to make sure that people know a few things, just in case.

1. Reviewers always have the right to say whatever they feel to be true. I have never once argued with a bad review. I expect them, and will receive them, over the course of my career. I also happen to have a very thick skin. (Try getting three novels universally rejected before you publish a single short story—it does wonders. Truly. I think this should be required in MFA programs: racking up as many rejections as it takes to no longer care.)

 2. I am not a critic. I am a fiction writer, and a bookseller. It is not my job to point out the flaws in other writers’ work. It is my job to help draw attention to writers whose work I adore. 

J. Silverman or E. Straub?