From The New Yorker, what does the popularity of memoirs tell us about ourselves? A review of Ben Yagoda’s Memoir: A History (and more at Bookforum). It’s probably the case that there is an unconscious sexism afoot in our literary culture, which props up the work of men at the expense of equally worthy books by their female counterparts. The man who rediscovered Africa: How Chinua Achebe's novels captured the soul of a continent. Read 'em and weep: An article on the literary masters of misery who delight in desolation. The first woman to hold the Oxford chair in Poetry and the great-great-great-grand daughter of Charles Darwin, Ruth Padel knows a thing or two about survival. Austrian economics and literary criticism: The preface and first chapter from Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture by Paul Cantor. From The Millions, Garth Risk Hallberg on the problem with prizes (or, who cares about the International Booker?). The Unstoppable Cult of Jane Eyre: Readers can't seem to get enough of their favorite Victorian heroine (and more). The first chapter from Jane Austen For Dummies by Joan Elizabeth Klingel Ray. For the first time, The Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, the saga of the irrepressible Ostap Bender, a trickster and individualist at odds with the stultifying collective atmosphere, is available in English. Edgar Allan Poe is 200: All you need to know about the macabre master, from The Baltimore Sun (and more). As Martin Amis and Ian McEwan bring out new books, Alex Clark asks: have the headline-grabbing novelists lived up to their early promise? (and more)
