Dear readers, I have two fun offerings for you today and it would be hard to go wrong with either. Behind Door No. 1: Last month my colleague Elisabeth Egan drove to upstate New York to participate in a read-aloud book club of sorts called Page Break. There, she spent a weekend with 16 strangers reading “Night Night Fawn,” Jordy Rosenberg’s recent novel about a sharp-tongued woman dying of cancer as she reflects on her relationship with her estranged trans son. I’ll admit I was skeptical about the concept; personally, going round-robin in a circle with strangers has the whiff of an Al-Anon meeting and little of the introverted pleasure I derive from reading fiction. But Egan makes the retreat sound appealing, like a brainy sleep-away camp. And the novel inspired genuinely intimate conversations among attendees, who shared their personal experiences with politics, gender and sexuality. Now, for Door No. 2: Egan also has a sweet profile about the so-called Literary King of Tulsa — who is, as it turns out, getting ready to decamp to Seattle. Did I know there was a cultural monarchy in Oklahoma headed up by a man who resembles, in her words, “a lanky mash-up of Jimmy Stewart and the Man with the Yellow Hat”? I did not. But I’m glad to learn about his investments in his home city, and his efforts to inspire major writers to linger there. His is really a story of leaving places better off than how you found them; there’s something we can all take from that. See you next time. Like this email? We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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