Lit Links for the Work Week

In case you missed it, Bookriot’s Sunday Diversion “Guess These Books by the Catalog Cards” featured Library of Congress subject headings in a game to test your literary chops. Check out the Library’s catalog to create your own literary diversions.

The New Yorker’s PageTurner announced last week that Tom Wolfe’s upcoming book will be based on his 2006 lecture “The Human Beast.”  Nothing to do for Wolfe fans now but wait patiently – and check out Tom Wolfe reading at the Library just a year before, of course. If you’re close, swing by the Library to see his inscribed first edition of The Bonfire of the Vanities in the Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room to get your Wolfe fix.

You may have heard that the July 2013 issue of Harper’s features another essay based on the idea that poetry has died yet again (who knew it had so many lives?). We’ll let the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog explain where interested parties may find its pulse still beating (with special thanks to our friend Ron Charles). Or you could always listen to Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey read to the large crowds who showed up to prove there’s still something vital in American poetry.

Check out A. Igoni Barrett, who recently read as part of the Library’s series “Conversations with African Poets and Writers,” talking about his new short story collection Love is Power, or Something Like That: Stories at the Graywolf Press blog.

Last, you may have noticed that we’re trying out a new regular feature for the blog. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.