The World Cup begins today in South Africa, and the New Republic has enlisted novelists, such as Aleksandar Hemon, authors like Tom Vanderbilt, as well as critics and TNR staff to detail all the action at their blog Goal Post. Of course there's more to life in South Africa than soccer, as novelist André Brink writes: "There's so much constantly to react to in the world in which we live, and in a country like South Africa, that can become a full-time occupation;" from Bookforum's pages, Jennifer Egan reviews Brink's 2008 novel Other Lives.
The Wall Street Journal investigates how digital self-publishing is shaking up the book industry, while Slate recommends the The Shack, a self-published novel about God as an African-American woman, which has sold millions of copies.
Local bookstores build community, so we were saddening to hear that Politics and Prose, the iconic independent bookstore in Washington, D.C., has been put up for sale.
