See accompanying image for an illustration of what the oncoming semester feels like.

I’m just about done prepping a new class — an intro English lit class, “Women’s Popular Genres” — and I’ve finished my wonderful two-year internship at the Harry Ransom Center, where I worked in the Public Services department.  I’m finishing up my first dissertation chapter, trying to stay on top of the book world, writing fellowship applications, and awaiting a galley copy of my first academic publication, which needs marking up. Among other things. Have I mentioned how hot this summer has been in Austin? Only twelve million times? Sorry.

The other thing I’ve done recently is race through Tana French’s first two books, In the Woods and The Likeness. My mother sent me the first one and I stayed up till one-thirty on the night before my last day at the Ransom Center in order to finish it and read so fast I gave myself a headache. I actually enjoyed The Likeness even more, though, and not just because of French’s marvelously well-done homage to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (which French names as “both my favorite literary novel and my favorite crime novel” — oddly enough, the reading guide for The Likeness includes not a single mention of The Secret History). Highly recommended.

Here’s a news story that wouldn’t be at all out of place in one of French’s books.

And, to conclude, a surprisingly pleasant and edifying back-and-forth between Matthew Cheney and Tonaya Thompson, an assistant editor at Tin House, about Tin House’s standards for genre material.

Now: back to my to-do list.

Justine Larbalestier’s book Liar has a beautiful new cover. You can see the old cover via the Amazon link (right now, anyway — hopefully that’ll be fixed soon, too). Responding to the distress of her readers, Ms. Larbalestier chose to speak out about Bloomsbury’s decision to represent her black protagonist with a white cover model. And Bloomsbury — after much embarrassing defensiveness — finally chose to do the right thing and produce a new cover. They could’ve gone with the Australian cover, which is a text-based design, but instead they decided to reshoot a variant of the US cover image with a black model. You know — a girl who might actually look like the narrator of the book. They’re re-jacketing the entire print run for an October release.

I know this doesn’t fix the systemic problems that produced the original cover, but it still makes me really happy.

Via coffeeandink, a music video recommendation: Janelle Monae’s Many Moons, an sf short film inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

Amazingly catchy and beautifully clever.