On the Shelf

James Joyce by Alex Ehrenzweig, 1915.

A cultural news roundup.

New York poet Samuel Menashe has died at 85.

James Salter wins the Rea Award for short fiction.

Would Joyce have tweeted? One biographer thinks so.

“Writing about sports the way that smart people talk about sports is a simple idea, and a good one.”

“Now the fact that the president of the United States apparently doesn’t read women writers is not the greatest crisis facing the arts, much less the nation—but it’s upsetting nevertheless. As I suspect Obama would agree, matters of prejudice are never entirely minor, even when their manifestations may seem relatively benign.”

Publishing is experiencing an upswing. But are there too many books being published already?

The Berlin library will return books confiscated during the Third Reich—including a Communist Manifesto that may have belonged to Friedrich Engels.

Google celebrates Borges.

Being immortalized by Julia Roberts isn’t enough to save one London bookshop.