"I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one."
Matt Borondy, Publisher: A Moveable Feast by Hemingway, Just Before Dark: Collected Nonfiction by Jim Harrison, All I Did Was Ask by Terry Gross, Zazen by Vanessa Veselka, The Mindful Writer by Dinty W. Moore, Hobart #12: The Great Outdoors (May 2011).
Robert Birnbaum, Editor-at-Large: Canada by Richard Ford, Mission to Paris by Alan Furst, The Cove by Ron Rash, Prague Fatale by Phillip Kerr, The Life of a Fact by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, In Search of Small Gods by Jim Harrison, Baffler #19, Grantland #2, The Wet Engine by Brian Doyle. I stumbled across Brian Doyle’s 1st novel (of 12 published books) last year and have been avidly interested in his writing since then. His story collection Bin Laden’s Bald Spot was also a fictional high point last year.
James Warner, Fiction Editor: Daughters of the Revolution by Carolyn Cooke, What I Didn’t See by Karen Joy Fowler, Fun With Problems by Robert Stone, Through the Valley of the Newt of Spiders by Samuel R. Delany
Hilarie Ashton, Assistant Editor: DFW’s Pale King, Carver’s Where I’m Calling From, James Wolcott’s Lucking Out, and Gary Lutz’ I Looked Alive. Just finished J. Franco’s Palo Alto. Stay far, far away from that one. His genius in Pineapple Express does not translate to readable prose.
Alexandra Tursi, Visuals Editor: Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, The Sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt, The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits.
What are you reading?
In China historians have found out a lot about the early Chinese dynasties from the written documents left behind. From the Shang Dynasty most of this writing has survived on bones or bronze implements. Markings on turtle shells (used as oracle bones) have been carbon-dated to around 1500 BC. Historians have found that the type of media used had an effect on what the writing was documenting and how it was used.