1. Haruki Murakami: the moment I knew I would be a novelist
From The Telegraph: As Haruki Murakami’s early ‘kitchen-table novels’ are published in English for the first time, he reveals how a baseball game – and a wounded pigeon – changed the course of his life.
2. 17 Brilliant Short Novels You Can Read in a Sitting
From Electric Literature: It’s immensely satisfying to finish a book in a single day, so in the spirit of celebrating quick reads here are some of my favorite short novels. I’ve tried to avoid the most obvious titles that are regularly assigned in school (The Stranger, Heart of Darkness, Mrs Dalloway, Of Mice and Men, Frankenstein, The Crying of Lot 49, etc.). Hopefully you’ll find some titles here you haven’t read before.
3. Weekend magazine short story special 2015
From The Guardian: Seven new stories from writers including Will Self, Dave Eggers and Sheila Heti.
5. The Art of Fiction No. 94, EL Doctorow interviewed by George Plimpton
From The Paris Review: At first meeting, Doctorow gives the impression of being somewhat retiring in manner. Yet, though his voice is soft, it is distinctive and demands attention.
6. Monkeys by Clarice Lispector
Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, who died in 1977, has been described as the most important Jewish writer since Franz Kafka. Read a newly translated story from the Guernica/PEN Flash series.
7. Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman’ Should Not Have Been Published by William Giraldi
From The New Republic: Ponderous and lurching, haltingly confected, the novel plods along in search of a plot, tranquilizes you with vast fallow patches, with deadening dead zones, with onslaughts of cliché and dialogue made of pamphleteering monologue or else eye-rolling chitchat.