April 24, 2013 On the Shelf Buy Tiffany’s, and Other News By Sadie Stein Should you have $50,000 lying around, you have two days to bid on this manuscript of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. A new book argues that Jane Austen “isn’t merely fodder for game-theoretical analysis, but an unacknowledged founder of the discipline itself: a kind of Empire-waisted version of the mathematician and cold war thinker John von Neumann, ruthlessly breaking down the stratagems of 18th-century social warfare.” But … didn’t she come first? Doesn’t that make him a trousered version of her? Discuss. Andy Griffith and Robert Burns: a surprisingly convincing case for their spiritual kinship. An appreciation of The Lonely Doll and its complex legacy.
April 23, 2013 On the Shelf Bargain Books, and Other News By Sadie Stein It’s World Book Night. When you buy a book for $3.50 and it’s signed by Martin Luther King. The Digital Public Library of America is live! The craft behind Toronto’s Type Books storefront. RIP Mud Luscious Press.
April 22, 2013 On the Shelf Mixed-Up Tweeters, and Other News By Clare Fentress E. L. Konigsburg, author of beloved children’s titles The View from Saturday, A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, and, most famously, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, has died, at eighty-three. Speaking of people in museums past closing hours, Whitey Bulger is the subject of another book. (Considering he is “known to be a book reader,” maybe he won’t mind too much.) In other Boston news, The New Yorker talks literature, violence, and the Caucasus in light of last week’s tragic events. And in case you missed this informative memo to tweeters: Chechens are not from the Czech Republic. The 2012 LA Times Book Prize winners have been announced.
April 19, 2013 On the Shelf Close Reading, and Other News By Sadie Stein A sly French literacy campaign wins international plaudits. (Look again: that’s it right there!) Writers mobilize to save Venice’s bookshops. Sadly, Portland’s Murder by the Book is meeting an unkinder fate. “When she went to New York [from Boston], she wasn’t thinking about the work she was going to do—she was thinking about the clothes she was going to wear.” Sylvia Plath’s month at Mademoiselle, an experience that would figure in The Bell Jar. Well, this was clearly never going to bother anyone: “10 Talented Female Authors I Wouldn’t Kick Out of Bed for Writing About Crackers.” (He has a type.)
April 18, 2013 On the Shelf Poets Without Clothes, and Other News By Sadie Stein Talk about truth in advertising: meet Poets Without Clothes. [NSFW] Check out this nifty animation of a 1996 DFW interview. George Orwell’s northern Indian birthplace is being turned into a memorial … for Gandhi. What are libraries doing with old books? Lots of things. Pew: “About seven in ten of those who used a library over a twelve-month period did so to borrow print books or to browse the shelves.”
April 17, 2013 On the Shelf Challenges, and Other News By Sadie Stein “At times of tragedy, the mind goes to certain favored zones; mine goes automatically to poetry.” Dan Chiasson offers the tested comforts of William Langland. The Los Angeles Times brings us a nifty map of literary LA. The most frequently challenged library book of 2012? Captain Underpants. Bells, whistles, and animation: the so-called next generation of e-books. Flann O’Brien’s “alleged role as author of an allegedly fake interview with John Stanislaus Joyce, father of James Joyce.”