March 28, 2012 On the Shelf Thurber Insults and Library Dreams By Sadie Stein A cultural news roundup. Happy seventy-sixth, Mario Vargas Llosa! Muggles get the Harry Potter treatment in Florida. “At Ollivanders, the wand shop, character actors put on a show. With a few dozen people crowded into a room, a bearded wizard proceeds to help a child select a wand. ‘Descendo!’ he cries. Boxes tumble down and the shelves fall apart on cue. It was the wrong wand. ‘Repairo!’ he cries. The shelves put themselves back together. The long-bearded gent eventually gives the girl an Ash wand, ‘an excellent wand for a charismatic, successful wizard.’” You can even read the books! At forty-two, historical novelist Rabee Jaber is the youngest winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. On the plus side, James Thurber wrote back to his fans. “One of the things that discourage us writers is the fact that 90 per cent of you children write wholly, or partly, illiterate letters, carelessly typed. You yourself write ‘clarr’ for ‘class’ and that’s a honey, Robert, since s is next to a, and r is on the line above.” An ode to the thesaurus. How about a little fancy-library porn? (This Johns Hopkins professor totally beats Lagerfeld in the library stakes.) Book origami. Henry James is the most-studied writer. Did it really take this long to make an Art of War graphic novel?
March 21, 2012 On the Shelf The History of English in Ten Minutes, Your Brain on Books, and Other News By Sadie Stein A cultural news roundup. The history of English in ten minutes. (Courtesy of Reddit!) Bei Ling: “I was amazed that no independent voice, no exiled or dissident writer from China is being represented at the London Book Fair.” Dystopian dream books. Junkie: the It bag for spring! This is your brain on books. Remembering Joe Brainard. “The centrepiece of our brand new displays in Solo Gallery is Roald Dahl’s Writing Hut, complete with all its original contents and furnishings. Visitors can see the ‘little nest’ as Roald Dahl called it, exactly as he had it set up, with all the extraordinary and fascinating objects he kept at hand for contemplation and inspiration.” Cookbook ghostwriters. And the fallout. “The man was sitting on the porch with some people he had just met, talking about books and authors. The 34-year-old man was then approached by another party guest, who started speaking to him in a condescending manner. An argument ensued and the man was suddenly struck in the side of the head, suffering a cut to his left ear, Bush said. The man’s glasses went flying off of his head and fell to the ground, with one of the lenses popping out of the frames, Bush said.” Book nerds v. Kanye. NSFW.
March 14, 2012 On the Shelf The Hobbit Pub Sued, Build Your Own Murakami, and Other News By Sadie Stein Madeline. A cultural news roundup. RIP, Encyclopedia Britannica. A Delhi conference was too small for both Salman Rushdie and Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. Southampton’s venerable “Hobbit Pub” is being sued by the upcoming film; Stephen Fry leaps to its defense. Das Rheingold? There’s an app for that. I’ll be dipped! A dictionary of regional American English. Gilgamesh! The Urban Dictionary lit guide. What we talk about when we talk about fan fic. Good Books, indeed. Hemingway’s keeper shelf. Build your own Murakami! Discovered: five hundred forgotten fairy tales. Madeline’s mixtape. Hitchens reports on the afterlife.
March 7, 2012 On the Shelf #JonathanFranzenHates, Nabokoving, and Other News By Sadie Stein Nabokoving. A cultural news roundup. “Once again, it’s that time of year when otherwise mature adults paint their faces in the palettes of their favorite book jacket designers, and all across Facebook college kids post pictures of themselves Nabokoving. Yes, we’re talking about book awards season.” Happy birthday, John Updike! Happy birthday, Douglas Adams! Geoff Dyer on “bunking off.” With friends like these, Saul Bellow didn’t need enemies. Elizabeth Bowen and Jean Rhys get the “blue plaque treatment” in London. Stephen King: “The idea that a writer can bring his core audience into the tent with a blurb … you might as well try herding cats.” The fact that Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s here is a selling point. The fact that it has eighteen rooms doesn’t hurt, either. Footnotes upon footnotes in Footnote. “Eggers named his journal after McSweeney before he knew anything about the man, and didn’t discover his identity until after McSweeney died in January 2010 at age sixty-seven.” The famously combative Ben Jonson. Jonathan Franzen: “Twitter is unspeakably irritating. Twitter stands for everything I oppose … it’s hard to cite facts or create an argument in 140 characters … it’s like if Kafka had decided to make a video semaphoring The Metamorphosis. Or it’s like writing a novel without the letter ‘P’… It’s the ultimate irresponsible medium … People I care about are readers … particularly serious readers and writers, these are my people. And we do not like to yak about ourselves.” #JonathanFranzenHates