May 20, 2013 | by Sadie Stein
May or may not be competent needle-woman.
TAGS etiquette, George R.R. Martin, Joyce Carol Oates, The Great Gatsby
May 17, 2013 | by Sadie Stein
In Japanese, tsundoku means “the act of buying books and not reading them, leaving them to pile up.”
The Cocktail Chart of Film and Literature is quite an achievement.
An inspirational poem is sweeping Little League fields across the nation.
“But even bigger than the novels, it seems, is the farm lit memoir. Call it the ‘career girl’s gone Green Acres’ narrative, it inevitably involves a journalist or other hard-charging type who repairs to the countryside, either to follow a dream or a man, or to escape a calamity (debt, divorce).” Farm lit is the new chick lit.
Happy news! Baltimore’s Edgar Allan Poe Museum will reopen come October.
TAGS cokctails, Edgar Allan Poe, Farm Lit
May 16, 2013 | by Sadie Stein
- In a note to Fitzgerald, Hemingway shows he was better at being aggressive than passive-aggressive.
- The Nation has launched eBookNation, which will feature digital versions of both new work and items from the archive (dating back to 1865!).
- Notting Hill Editions has announced the William Hazlitt Essay Prize for nonfiction writing.
- “Leipzigers read so much, the city’s nickname was ‘Leserland,’ or Readerland. And it does feel, immediately, like a city of bookish cyclists.” Alexander Chee on culture clash.
TAGS Alexander Chee, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hazlitt Prize, The Nation
May 15, 2013 | by Sadie Stein
Flavorwire rounds up handwritten outlines. (That’s William Faulkner’s outline for A Fable written on the wall.)
“The Good Union bookstore, which usually sells school textbooks, said it had sold roughly eighty sets of the trilogy in the past month. By comparison, Taobao’s current number one best seller, Travel Keeps You Young, sold four hundred copies last month.” Contraband 50 Shades hits China.
Judy Blume, on the big screen for the first time.
“I saw women on the street cars with their little changer belts … And they had caps with bills on them and they had form-fitting jackets. I loved the uniforms! So I said, ‘That’s the job I want.’” Maya Angelou’s teenage ambition.
Meet the Man Booker International Prize finalists.
TAGS Judy Blume, Maya Angelou, roundup, William Faulkner
May 14, 2013 | by Sadie Stein
“I am happy, but in debt … I have no job. My [U.S.] visa is out of order. There may be a war. But I have an epithalamion to write and cannot worry much.” A journal W. H. Auden kept in 1939, believed lost, has been found. (Not sure where; details are vague.) It will go to auction next month.
Meet the “grand impresario of American etymologists” and his “unique self-published journal, Comments on Etymology.”
David Hare is adapting Behind the Beautiful Forevers for the London stage.
Reading the stoop books of Brooklyn.
Speaking of the borough of kings: a topless book club.
TAGS Brooklyn, etymology, poetry, roundup, W. H. Auden
May 13, 2013 | by Sadie Stein
Tessa Hadley on how to write tedium, interestingly.
Speaking of alleviating boredom: good reads for a long flight.
Can there ever be too many literary-tattoo roundups? Well, whatever your answer, here’s a good one!
LeVar Burton schools Stephen Colbert and Carey Mulligan on The Great Gatsby. But you don’t have to take his word for it!
Dan Brown apparently deals with writer’s block by hanging upside down.
TAGS Dan Brown, LeVar Burton, news, roundup, Tessa Hadley
