Posts Tagged ‘Harry Potter’
March 28, 2012 | by Sadie Stein
A cultural news roundup.
Happy seventy-sixth, Mario Vargas Llosa!
Muggles get the Harry Potter treatment in Florida. “At Ollivanders, the wand shop, character actors put on a show. With a few dozen people crowded into a room, a bearded wizard proceeds to help a child select a wand. ‘Descendo!’ he cries. Boxes tumble down and the shelves fall apart on cue. It was the wrong wand. ‘Repairo!’ he cries. The shelves put themselves back together. The long-bearded gent eventually gives the girl an Ash wand, ‘an excellent wand for a charismatic, successful wizard.’”
You can even read the books!
At forty-two, historical novelist Rabee Jaber is the youngest winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
On the plus side, James Thurber wrote back to his fans. “One of the things that discourage us writers is the fact that 90 per cent of you children write wholly, or partly, illiterate letters, carelessly typed. You yourself write ‘clarr’ for ‘class’ and that’s a honey, Robert, since s is next to a, and r is on the line above.”
An ode to the thesaurus.
How about a little fancy-library porn? (This Johns Hopkins professor totally beats Lagerfeld in the library stakes.)
Book origami.
Henry James is the most-studied writer.
Did it really take this long to make an Art of War graphic novel?
TAGS Harry Potter, Henry James, James Thurber, JK Rowling, Karl Lagerfeld, Mario Vargas Llosa, origami, Rabee Jaber, The Art of War
November 2, 2011 | by Sadie Stein
TAGS Blue Nights, Groucho Marx, H&M, Harry Potter, Heart of Darkness, J. K. Rowling, Joan Didion, Kim Kardashian, Pauline Kael, Ragip Zarakolu, rebecca, Salman Rushdie, St. Mark's Bookshop, Steve Jobs, T. S. Eliot, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
October 5, 2011 | by Sadie Stein
Hans Christian Andersen.
A cultural news roundup.
Odds on the Nobel?
Harry Potter takes his show on the road.
But not his e-book.
The trouble with Amazon.
Bad news for independent bookstores.
And chain bookstores.
In praise of the Farmers’ Almanac.
Hans Christian Andersen to be buried, again.
Volume 12 of Selected Works of Kim Jong-il hits the shelves.
“That American culture could bring forth so relentless a critic is perhaps one of the reasons to still think well of it.”
A visit to southeast London.
Advice for students: “To get an education, you’re probably going to have to fight against the institution that you find yourself in—no matter how prestigious it may be. (In fact, the more prestigious the school, the more you’ll probably have to push.) You can get a terrific education in America now—there are astonishing opportunities at almost every college—but the education will not be presented to you wrapped and bowed. To get it, you’ll need to struggle and strive, to be strong, and occasionally even to piss off some admirable people.”
TAGS "Christopher Lasch", Amazon.com, Bob Dylan, borders, Farmers Almanac, Hans Christian Andersen, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, Kim Jong-il, London, Mark Edmundson
August 31, 2011 | by Sadie Stein
A cultural news roundup.
Novelist and poet Susan Fromberg Schaeffer has died at seventy-one.
Ruth Rendell speaks out on health cuts.
Snape, the dark-horse winner of a Harry Potter popularity contest. This is controversial.
What to read when you’re sick.
P. G. Wodehouse: the movie.
Javier Cercas: “I respect music too much—if I write I write, if I listen I listen.”
Tweeting from beyond the grave?
Samples of Obama’s summer reading.
The most-wanted out-of-print title? Madonna’s Sex.
The first Kashmir Book Festival has been canceled amid fears of violence.
She Loves You: the Beatles and pronoun use.
A. S. Byatt: “I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along.”
TAGS A.S. Byatt, Harry Potter, Javier Cercas, Kashmir Book Festival, Madonna, P.G. Wodehouse, Ruth Rendell, sex, Snape, Susan Fromberg Shaeffer, The Beatles, Twitter
August 17, 2011 | by Sadie Stein
A cultural news roundup.
Just Kids gets the big-screen treatment.
So does Tolkien.
Kathryn Stockett triumphs in court (as well as at the movies).
Need an alternative to The Help? Try Welty.
“As a kid I would get my parents to drop me off at my local library on their way to work during the summer holidays and I would walk home at night. For several years I read the children’s library until I finished the children’s library. Then I moved into the adult library and slowly worked my way through them. With the kids’ library I did it alphabetically but I discovered I couldn't do that with the adult one because there were too many big boring books to read, so I did it by interesting covers.”
A tribute to Wendy Wasserstein.
Amazon moves in on publishing with first “major” deal.
The next best thing to a vacation? Reading about a vacation.
The movies may be complete, and the books long finished, but Harry Potter fans need not despair: Pottermore launches in October.
The case for spoilers!
Who’s your favorite deliciously awful fictional character?
Bookstores clear a “Rick Perry” section.
“Ah ha! I’ve finally put my finger on a concrete reason for my lingering, irrational, doubtless soon-to-be-jettisoned prejudice against e-readers.”
TAGS Amazon, e-reader, Eudora Welty, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkein, Just Kids, Kathryn Stockett, library, Neil Gaiman, Patti Smith, Pottermore, Rick Perry, spoilers, The Help, Tolkein, Wendy and the Lost Boys, Wendy Wasserstein
July 20, 2011 | by Sadie Stein
Jane Austen
A cultural news roundup.
An unfinished Jane Austen novel sells at auction for $1.6 million.
The end of Borders.
“Sigmund Freud, cokehead.”
California schoolbooks add the LGBT community.
So do Archie comics.
The rock memoir is huge: can the Thin White Duke (or for that matter Ziggy Stardust) be far behind? Bowie becomes publishers’ “top target.”
“We insist that students touch and smell and shine light through items, and investigate them to understand the book in history, and understand the book as history.”
Entering the publishing world in the digital age.
Longshot Magazine is back.
A Harry Potter plagiarism case bites the dust.
Frederick Seidel on a time before air-conditioning.
A brief history of Pendleton.
Alan Bennett: “I have always been happy in libraries, though without ever being entirely at ease there.”
How to undress a Victorian lady.
If the Paradise Lost adaptation is hell for Milton lovers, call Bradley Cooper the devil.
The NewsCorp scandal: (almost) stranger than fiction.
TAGS Alan Bennett, Archie, borders, Bradley Cooper, David Bowie, Harry Potter, Jane Austen, Paradise Lost, Sigmund Freud
A cultural news roundup.
A cultural news roundup.
