The Paris Review

We meet Mr Messy—a man whose entire day-to-day existence is the undiluted expression of his individuality. His very untidiness is a metaphor for his blissful and unselfconscious disregard for the Social Order. Yes, there are times when he himself is a victim of this individuality—as when he trips over a brush he has left on his garden path—but he goes through life with a smile on his face.

This series of reviews from 2010 is, in a word, brilliant.

• “Other books I can’t throw away because—well, they’re books, and you can’t throw away a book, can you?” In memory of the late Roger Ebert, an essay on libraries and love.
• Amazon is in the process of testing an automated cover generator. Well, of course they are, silly.
• Why do so many people hate the word moist, anyway? On word aversion.
• Lizzie Skurnick, the Boswell of the world of YA literature, is launching Lizzie Skurnick Books, an imprint that will “bring back the very best in young adult literature, from the classics of the 1930s and 1940s, to the thrillers and social novels of the 1970s and 1980s.”
• Short version: Scotland is giving back some of George Washington’s books.

• “The largest and most important group of William Faulkner material ever to appear at auction”—including his Nobel medal, an unpublished short story, and illustrated letters, recently found at the Faulkner home—is expected to fetch at least $2 million at Sotheby’s come June. 
• Here is a sweet library marriage proposal for you. (To read, that is.)
• In further library human-interest, Flavorwire rounds up nifty librarians from around the country. (Just a small sampling, of course.)
• Now for something completely different: the all-seeing eye that is Amazon.com is acquiring Goodreads for an undisclosed sum.

• Books carved with surgical tools. 
• Related: “I’m sure what I did was completely blasphemous, but y’all ... it turned out really cool.” Wallpapering with Faulkner. (His pages, not him.)
• How many copies need to move to qualify a book as an Amazon bestseller? PW does the math and finds: not that many. 
• Speaking of inflation! In the UK, the sinister-sounding “inflation basket” indicates that people are buying more e-books, less champagne. 
• “These are fundamentally probing, even discomfiting, books.” Meghan O’Rourke pays tribute to Renata Adler. 

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