November 5, 2013 On the Shelf Airbrushed Austen, and Other News By Sadie Stein Jane Austen scholar Paula Byrne calls the author’s likeness on the new banknote “a nineteenth-century airbrushed makeover.” The image is based on the famous portrait by Austen’s sister Cassandra. Says Byrne, “It makes me quite angry as it’s been prettied up for the Victorian era when Jane Austen was very much a woman of Georgian character. The costume is wrong and the image creates a myth Austen was a demure spinster and not a deep-thinking author.” Zola Books is offering several previously unavailable Joan Didion works in digital form. Speaking of new paradigms, Douglas Coupland will be serializing a new work, Temp, in the giveaway paper Metro. A new book showcases the art of the pizza box, and it’s kind of wonderful.
November 4, 2013 On the Shelf Jeeves, Redux, and Other News By Sadie Stein Margaret Drabble: “At parties, after a few drinks, I start asking people to supper, which I always regret.” NaNoWriMo is upon us. Here are some inspirational quotes to help you get on with it. “I do not remember all the details, but I do remember the plot.” Borges as teacher. A nanny to London’s 1980s literary set (part of it, anyway) publishes a book of letters. “The great thing about Bertie is that he is a very generous-spirited, nice chap, with a sunny outlook on life. Forcing myself to think like that was good for me. It didn’t affect the way I speak—I didn’t start saying ‘What ho, old fruit!’—but it did affect the way I think. It made me look on the bright side.” Sebastian Faulks on taking on Jeeves and Wooster.
November 1, 2013 On the Shelf Modern Austen, and Other News By Sadie Stein Informality, sex, reticence, and other challenges of modernizing Austen. Morrissey’s autobiography crosses the pond December 3. Starting today, Amazon.com will start collecting sales tax in Massachusetts and Connecticut. “This so, so, so overdue,” the manager of a Brookline bookstore tells the Boston Globe. Speaking of Amazon.com! The behemoth is launching a digital literary magazine, Day One. Says Daphne Durham, publisher of the adult trade and children’s group, “Literary journals have long been an important part of giving a voice and a platform to new and undiscovered authors … We are trying to add to that tradition in a digital age.” Phew, glad someone’s on that.
October 31, 2013 On the Shelf Edgar Allan Ho, and Other News By Sadie Stein This would either confuse an alien who had just set foot on Earth, or maybe explain everything: the NSA haiku generator. Along similar lines: Edgar Allan Ho, which BoingBoing has anointed Best Sexy Costume 2013. (As the creator of the admittedly theoretical Sexy Struwwelpeter, I respectfully disagree.) The Life of Frederick Douglass: A Graphic Novel comes to Kickstarter. According to the Common Core guidelines, The Hunger Games is more complex than The Grapes of Wrath. (But, plotwise, it sort of is, no?)
October 30, 2013 On the Shelf Frolicking, and Other News By Sadie Stein At Salon, poet and photographer Thomas Sayers Ellis curates a portfolio inspired by Maya Angelou. The New York Public Library now releases lists of the most checked-out books of the month, and they are exactly what one might expect. Here are many pictures of Hemingway frolicking with cats. Because there are no second acts in American life, Conrad Murray—yes, Michael Jackson’s doctor—is, obviously, writing a memoir.
October 29, 2013 On the Shelf Literary Vigilantes, and Other News By Sadie Stein Seven haikus for failed hip-hop clothing lines. Lionel Shriver: “I have grown perversely nostalgic for my previous commercial failure—when my focus was pure, and the books were still fun to write, even if nobody read them.” An ode to literary siblings. “It became crystal clear that some piece-of-shit scam artist was preying on aspiring writers just hoping for a wisp of recognition. I considered this an added insult—nobody deserves to be swindled, but it took a particular kind of cruelty to bilk sweet, earnest, well-meaning writers, especially the ones who’d worked hard enough to actually finish a book and were now struggling to get it out there and read by people.” Davy Rothbart on literary vigilantism. Spanking may be bad for vocabulary.