January 9, 2014 On the Shelf The Best-Seller Algorithm, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Scientists have developed an algorithm for writing a hit novel. Go easy on the verbs and the clichés, and you, too, may see the best-seller list. (Consider calling your book “The Best-Seller Algorithm,” which has the bold ring of a blockbuster.) An endearingly earnest infographic defends librarians in the digital age. Look out for such phrases as “portal to archive” and “techy-savvy librarianship.” Strange things are afoot in New Mexico, where Cormac McCarthy’s ex-wife has been arrested for threatening someone with a gun after “a domestic dispute over space aliens.” Apologies for burying the lede, but: she produced the gun from her vagina. Earlier this week, an arsonist burned Tripoli’s Al Sa’eh Library, destroying an estimated fifty thousand books.
January 8, 2014 On the Shelf Because, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring The American Dialect Society—how do we join?—has voted because the word of the year. They chose because because because “exploded with new grammatical possibilities in informal online use.” In the Midwest, towns are living without Borders. (The defunct bookstore chain, not the metaphorical limitation.) Some independent bookstores have even cropped up in its place. How did Reddit’s brilliant AMA series go from geeky to mainstream? (Did you know The Paris Review did one last year?) “Of course, my definition of evil is not everybody else’s. Evil is being involved in the glamour and charm of material existence, glamour in its old Gaelic sense meaning enchantment with the look of things, rather than the soul of things.” An expansive interview with the singular Kenneth Anger.
January 7, 2014 On the Shelf Siri Hates Her, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring HAL 9000—still the standard-bearer for baneful artificial intelligences. Eschewing received wisdom and millions of high school syllabi, one writer dares to contend that Charlotte Brontë’s Villette trumps Jane Eyre. Spike Jonze wrote the screenplay for Her, which features a honey-tongued operating system named Samantha, well before Siri came into this world—but surely you can see the connection. Siri can’t. Ask her about Her and you’ll get some guff: “I think she gives artificial intelligence a bad name.” As the New York Times prepares to debut its new home page, this helpful gif shows how the site has evolved since 2001. (“The New York Times on the Web,” it said then—as if to congratulate itself for having arrived.) Fan art for The Catcher in the Rye. Highest honors go to that left-handed fielder’s mitt. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince becomes an art exhibit.
January 6, 2014 On the Shelf Martin Amis Owes Everything to His “Wicked Stepmother,” and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Photography: Maximilian Schönherr, via Wikimedia Commons. Martin Amis pays elegant tribute to his deceased stepmother, who saved him from an early life as “a semi-literate truant.” Chang-rae Lee’s forthcoming On Such a Full Sea boasts the world’s first 3D-printed book cover. How to modernize literary classics (even when cell phones and the Internet bring an infestation of plot holes). Can great literature really change your life? (Quick answer: probably not, but maybe.)
January 3, 2014 On the Shelf Art and Literature Are Teeming with Monsters, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Art credit Hieronymus Bosch. Behold, art and literature’s greatest monsters! Plenty of welcome departures from the norm here—Frankenstein and Dracula didn’t make the list. Neither did Chuck Palahniuk. In a synergistic turn worthy of the greatest CEOs, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch has caused a spike in attendance at the Frick, where its namesake painting resides. (There’s a tote bag now, too.) An intrepid sociologist gets at the roots of uptalk—the irritating tendency to inflect every sentence as if it were a question—by watching Jeopardy! Disparaging nondisparagement agreements: Byliner canned editor Will Blythe, and he’s not going quietly. Or rather, he is going quietly, but he would prefer to reserve the right not to.
January 2, 2014 On the Shelf, Our Daily Correspondent Happy Birthday, Isaac Asimov (Maybe), and Other News By Sadie Stein Happy birthday, Isaac Asimov! Maybe. Probably. Newbery winner Kate DiCamillo has been named Ambassador of Young People’s Literature, a position which has been around since 2008. Sure you can find plenty of lists of best of 2013, but what books were unfinishable? (Well, for Laura Miller?) Ruth Rendell: “Reading is becoming a kind of specialist activity and that strikes terror into the heart of people who love reading.”