We love this idea! Starting today the innovative folks over at Electric Literature bring you Recommended Reading, a weekly dose of meaty writing chosen for you by notable authors and editors. This week: “Watching Mysteries With My Mother,” a story by Ben Marcus; next week, a new translation of Clarice Lispecter, chosen by New Directions.
Electric Literature has been well ahead of the pack in developing ways for people to enjoy real literature on their son-to-be-indispensable gadgets. From the beginning, for instance, they have been pairing writers and animators to make SingleSentenceAnimation comics to be found on YouTube; and their magazine Electric Literature was available on every platform you could imagine. (Read about their early days here.)
What we love about Recommended Reading is that it does not just add to the overload of available stuff but helps readers find not only writers worth reading but also the magazines and small presses who publish them, helping to build the little electronic islands of shared taste that we think and hope will be the wave of the literary future. Future guest editors will include Jim Shepard, Nathan Englander, and Aimee Bender, as well a raft of independent publishing partners. Recommended Reading will be available online, in ePub format and on the Kindle store, and readers can subscribe via email, Tumblr, or get updates by following Electric Literature on Facebook and Twitter. (We learn that Tumblr has an office of “Literary Outreach”—bravo Tumblr!)
Take a look!
