July 12, 2013 On the Shelf Beckett on the Block, and Other News By Sadie Stein Reading University is now the proud owner of “almost certainly the most important English language manuscript still in private hands,” a six-notebook draft of Samuel Beckett’s Murphy. (The damage? A cool [almost] one million pounds.) When writers eat. When writers drink. And speaking of comestibles: the typography picnic is a thing. Whether or not you’ve heard of them (we all know what happens when you assume), these six lesser-known women writers deserve your attention.
July 11, 2013 On the Shelf Parks and Prejudice, and Other News By Sadie Stein This speaks for itself: Pride and Prejudice mashed up with Parks and Recreation. Take this (anonymous) survey: What books do you pretend to have read? Shockingly, famously gregarious joiner J. D. Salinger was no fan of book clubs. Speaking of! The Catcher in the Rye and twenty-seven other books that Buzzfeed deems red flags. Windsor Castle is seeking “an exceptional scholar and bibliophile” to manage the Royal Library.
July 10, 2013 On the Shelf High-Altitude Language, and Other News By Sadie Stein Reading can affect the behavior of those who identify strongly with the central characters, a new study (and a million Twi-hards) finds. In other research news: a controversial linguistics study suggests that high altitude can directly impact the development of languages. “Civil libertarians and consumer advocates call it digital book-burning: censoring, erasing, altering or restricting access to books in electronic formats.” The activist group Geeks Out has called for a boycott of the upcoming Ender’s Game film in protest of author Orson Scott Card, who opposes same-sex marriage. Card responds, in part, “Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984.” In less fraught lit-cinematic news, Charlie Kaufman is taking on the adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five.
July 9, 2013 On the Shelf Giant Mr. Darcy Terrorizes London, and Other News By Sadie Stein A twelve-foot fiberglass Mr. Darcy is currently standing in the middle of Hyde Park’s Serpentine Lake, and is terrifying. A new analytics tool claims it can detect sarcasm in online comments. But the best part: “Its clients include the Home Office, EU Commission and Dubai Courts.” The artist formerly known as “the” is now represented by the symbol Ћ. Book titles missing one (key) letter. A scientifically accurate “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Sample lyric: “Thirty-two light years in the sky / Ten parsecs which is really high.”
July 8, 2013 On the Shelf Rahm Emanuel to Jump in Lake If Kids Read, and Other News By Sadie Stein “This ‘immortal’ pilferer of other men’s stories and ideas, with his monstrous rhetorical fustian, his unbearable platitudes, his pretentious reduction of the subtlest problems of life to commonplaces against which a Polytechnic debating club would revolt, his incredible unsuggestiveness, his sententious combination of ready reflection with complete intellectual sterility, and his consequent incapacity for getting out of the depth of even the most ignorant audience, except when he solemnly says something so transcendentally platitudinous that his more humble-minded hearers cannot bring themselves to believe that so great a man really meant to talk like their grandmothers.” And other literary takedowns. Playing on children’s eternal desire to see authority figures drenched in cold water, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Chicago Bear Israel Idonije have sworn to jump in wintry Lake Michigan if local kids read two million books this summer. Think the fun is over now that you’re back at work? Not so fast: here’s an idioms and formulaic language quiz! Plus: (more) dirty jokes from Shakespeare. When James Joyce, Jeanette Winterson, and Salman Rushdie wrote for children.
July 3, 2013 On the Shelf English Rude Word Enters German Language, and Other News By Sadie Stein Williams’ Book Store. On the manifold benefits of writing by hand. In which the author teaches Victorian literature to embryo accountants. Germany adopts shitstorm. Or, as the Beeb would have it, “English rude word enters German language.” Oh dear: the Chicago Sun-Times is discontinuing all book coverage. San Pedro’s Williams’ Book Store is closing after 104 years in business.