June 6, 2013 On the Shelf Joyce Carol Oates Gives Questionable Advice, and Other News By Sadie Stein “If you want to get the news from poems, you’ve come to the right place.” That would be the Boston Review. So much for reading being its own reward. This principal eats worms when his students meet reading goals. Mandarin: a language uniquely well-suited to punning. First-edition book clubs are, apparently, a thing. In the words of one friend, “We live in a sad and awesome time.” “As an author with a half century of literary success behind me, I can assure you the only way to make it in this industry is to meet as many publishers as you possibly can and then fuck them.” Joyce Carol Oates, meet The Onion.
June 5, 2013 On the Shelf Story Stamps, and Other News By Sadie Stein This Irish stamp features a 224-word short story. For those who want more sci with their fi: a new anthology, Kepler’s Dozen, collects short science fiction about real planets discovered by Kepler Spacecraft. Edited by scientists from Kepler! Great literature may improve us as human beings … … but! “It is not sufficient to become learned to have read much, if we read without reflection.” RIP really long German word, coined in 1999 in reference to the packaging of beef. Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, we hardly knew ya.
June 4, 2013 On the Shelf Murder! Intrigue! Book Clubs! And Other News By Sadie Stein “Illustrator Jonathan Wolstenholme is a fine artist living in London who depicts still lifes [that] feature animated books with arms engaged in humorous scenarios.” Tee-hee. Pulitzer-winning novelist Adam Johnson interviews Kim Jong-il’s sushi chef. The prime suspect in Pablo Neruda’s possible murder is an American double agent in witness protection (!!!). Today, Melville House releases James Agee’s “Cotton Tenants: Three Families” in book form. How to spot the homicidal maniac in your book club.
June 3, 2013 On the Shelf Suicide Notes, Mick Jagger, and Other News By Sadie Stein “The suicide note—and I’m being deadly earnest—is moving, strange, harrowing and peculiar literature … People’s interest in them is almost pornographic.” Hence, a class on the art of the missive. “After you have spent five or six years on a novel, you can’t abandon the project without risking a nervous breakdown.” After twelve years since publishing a story, Akhil Sharma talks to Page Turner. Mick Jagger says his autobiography would be boring, and besides, everyone knows everything. Take this spelling bee test, and tremble. (The winning word, by the way, was predictably controversial.) Can there be too many pictures of nifty book rooms? There cannot. Above, the Library Lounge in Zurich.
May 31, 2013 On the Shelf Dolly Parton, Our Lady of Free Books, and Other News By Sadie Stein Did you know Dolly Parton has a discreet career delivering 50 million free books to children, as part of Imagination Library? Of course she does. Pencil nibbler? These peppermint pencils are designed to stimulate concentration. (You’re actually just intended to sniff them.) At the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee, participants were to be required not merely to spell but also to define the words in question. This resulted in indignation. Speaking of! Twitter either showcases, or causes, abhorrent spelling and grammar. Presented without comment: “A publishing company is spicing up a cross-Canada literary event by adding knitting to the equation.”
May 30, 2013 On the Shelf When Authors Annotate, and Other News By Sadie Stein This list of authors’ annotations to books in their personal libraries is truly fantastic. (The above is, obviously, David Foster Wallace’s.) In a letter, Rudyard Kipling admits that “it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously” to material from other writers while writing The Jungle Book. Probable, even! Now we’re all really self-conscious about how we pronounce pecan. The National Book Critics Circle is introducing a new awards category, for first books in any genre. “One hundred and eighteen miles north of London, in the town of Boston, England, there lives a retired newspaperman named John Richards who is experiencing an unusually rotten spring. Richards is the founder and chairman of something called the Apostrophe Protection Society. His world, at least as related to the tiny mark that denotes possessives and the omission of letters from certain words, appears to be crashing down around him.”