November 27, 2012 On the Shelf Scandal at the (Old) OED, and Other News By Sadie Stein “An eminent former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary covertly deleted thousands of words because of their foreign origins and bizarrely blamed previous editors, according to claims in a book published this week.” It may be intended to kickstart NaNoWriMo, but we think this Random Line Generator could be put to all sorts of interesting social uses. “They would have loved me to have written fantasy fiction because that would have been easier to sell from a Tolkien, but I wanted to write thrillers.” Simon Tolkien on his famous grandfather’s legacy. “I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book. A book is a book is a book.” Maurice Sendak was characteristically wishy-washy on the subject of e-books. Some less vitriolic takes on the state of print.
November 26, 2012 On the Shelf Music to Write By, and Other News By Sadie Stein The six-hour duration may be aspirational, but you have to love this writing sound track. Ann Lamott tweets that she will stake her reputation on the varied titles mention in her New York Times “By the Book” column. And speaking of mutual admiration: authors choose their favorite books of 2012. “The first hard-boiled female protagonists were written by men.” A brief history of tough dames. “Those poor scribes … had their work cut out for them.” John Banville on the Book of Kells. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
November 21, 2012 On the Shelf Stephen King: The Musical, and Other News By Sadie Stein It’s a David and Goliath story, if David were also pretty tall: the Tolkien Estate is suing Warner Brothers for a cool eighty million dollars over online slot machines and other digital merch that they claim violates copyright. In more literary retirement news: Hungarian Nobel laureate Imre Kertész is also calling it a day. Jennifer Egan, Roxana Robinson, Philip Gourevitch, John Burnham Schwartz, Jane Green, Michael Cunningham, Nick Flynn, Mary Morris, and Darin Strauss all have a mammoth group cameo in Michael Maren’s forthcoming film, A Short History of Decay. Because numerous bookstores are refusing to stock titles from the Amazon imprint, one of its authors claims that his book The 4-Hour Chef is “poised to be the most banned book in U.S. history.” Dubious. Presented sans comment: “Elvis Costello and Sheryl Crow will both be singing on the soundtrack of a ghostly musical written by Stephen King and John Mellencamp.”
November 20, 2012 On the Shelf George Eliot’s Desk Stolen, and Other News By Sadie Stein George Eliot’s writing desk has been stolen from the Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery in Warwickshire. (It’s a lap desk, so that was easier than it sounds.) A local councillor calls the theft “a low blow.” “This event, mixing an author and an apartment, is just one of many such gatherings that have taken place at buildings across Manhattan in recent months.” Come for the reading, stay for the pricey real estate! Take heart from the fact that books are … bait? Look on his works, and tremble: all Tom Wolfe’s books, arrayed. In case you were wondering, Helen Vendler is reading John Ashbery and D. A. Powell. Among others. No novels, though! “If you like the precision and concision of poetry a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way.” “We liked the the double meaning of weather and communication,” says Jay Schwartz of Dictionary.com, which has named bluster its word of 2012.
November 19, 2012 On the Shelf Beautiful Books, and Other News By Sadie Stein Stationer Mr. Boddington’s Studio does a series of whimsical Penguin Classics covers. Raymond Carver’s OkCupid profile, as edited by Gordon Lish. “On the Kindle, each screen shot floats in space, isolated from the previous or subsequent ones, an effect that left my memory of the book weirdly nebulous.” The challenges of reviewing on the Kindle. Five books on anxiety. “Mr. Roth hasn’t given up writing entirely. He is collaborating on a novella, via e-mail, with the 8-year-old daughter of a former girlfriend.”
November 16, 2012 On the Shelf Truman Capote Manuscript Is Discovered, and Other News By Sadie Stein An unfinished Truman Capote manuscript is discovered at the New York Public Library. Cocktail recipes by Hemingway. Pope Benedict encourages his flock to learn Latin. Poems in the voice of cats. Nora Roberts revitalizes her Maryland town.