Oprah and her minions must read my blog because a little bird told me that her next book club selection is a book that also happens to be on my reading queue. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is a somewhat forgotten classic by Carson McCullers. From what I’ve heard, the book resembles To Kill a Mockingbird and several other works of fiction by Southern women authors. And now it will be a bestseller. If you are one of those people who gets annoyed about the Oprah logo, hurry and get one before they run out of unbesmirched copies.
News Flash
Watching New Orleans
It’s been hard to watch the news the last couple of days. I’ve been interning with chicagotribune.com this summer, so, since Monday, I’ve been pretty immersed in what’s been happening on the Gulf coast – as immersed as one can be, I suppose, with out being actually immersed. Judging from the light traffic this blog has gotten over the past few days, I’m guessing most folks have been spending their online time reading the news, as I have. Aside from the major news sources – CNN, etc. – here’s what I’ve been refreshing many times a day: the WWLTV blog, the Times Picayune Breaking News Weblog, The Irish Trojan’s blog, and The Interdictor. It’s amazing how much all the blogs out there have enriched the coverage of this catastrophe. It’s a great time to be a news consumer.But you may, like me, also need a diversion from the news. Luckily, my favorite New Yorker of the year has just arrived at my doorstep: The Food Issue. I can’t wait to start reading it. Other diversions:The Chicagoist is giving away three books to promote Picador USA’s 10th anniversary event at the Harold Washington Library in ChicagoI might have to try this: Library Thing is a Web site where you can catalog your library. You can tag the books by subject, and the system pulls in Library of Congress cataloging data. Free for the first 200 books and 10 dollars for a 20,000 book limit. (via H2O)Bookfinder.com, the ultimate Web site for tracking down hard to find books, has released their latest list “of the most sought after out of print titles in America.”
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Some Non-book News
One of my many side projects is coming to fruition right now. A while ago my friend Derek and I started a record label called Realistic Records. After planning for almost a year, we have released our first record. The Recoys are the former band of current members of The Walkmen and The French Kicks This is an album that never was, but probably should have been, so we’ve put together a vinyl only run of 1000. It’s called Recoys Rekoys. The record is fantastic and if you like the Walkmen or the French Kicks or any of the great new rock that’s out right now, then you’ll love this album. You can buy it either here or here and hopefully it will soon be available in your local record store. Also, the Recoys will be reuniting for one night only to celebrate the long awaited release of this album. Here are the details:Friday June 20thkingsland taverncorner of kingsland and nassau in greenpointHopefully I’ll see you there.
Tallying Up the Wives
The Economist gets my award for best infographic of the week with this visual tally of the wives of the leading Republican presidential candidates. Judging by this criteria, Mitt Romney appears to have a clear advantage over his rivals. (source)
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New Yorker Fiction by the Numbers
With seven years of data compiled, we can get some hard info on the New Yorker's tendencies when publishing fiction.
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Gabo Gets Back To Work
In late 2004, I received this question from a reader:I’m wondering when the next volume of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s autobiography is coming out – anyone know?At the time I didn’t have an answer, but I instead managed to stumble upon the news, then ricocheting across the Spanish-speaking world, that he had finished a new novel, Memories of My Melancholy Whores. (The Millions was, in fact, the first English-language publication to report the news, and that post gave us our first big shot of readers.)Now, however, we have received word that Marquez may be starting in on volume two of his proposed three volume biography. The first volume covered his childhood, and Marquez has said that the second volume may carry us through to his being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1982. Reporting on the occasion of Marquez’s 80th birthday, the LA Times said:His longtime friend and collaborator Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza said by telephone last week from Portugal that “Gabo,” as Garcia Marquez is known here, is picking up with his memoirs in Paris in the mid-1950s, where his first bestselling volume, Living to Tell the Tale, left off.It’s welcome news for fans, as Marquez “last year gave friends the disappointing news that he had ‘run out of gas’ and was quitting writing. The author was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1999, and after treatment at UCLA Medical Center, he recently was pronounced free of the disease.”As an aside, it was Marquez’s trips to Los Angeles to be treated that gave me the opportunity to meet him in the very early (and slightly embarrassing) days of this blog. (You’ll have to scroll down. I don’t know what I was thinking – How could I not lead that post with Marquez!)
Mapping
I’m a map person. There are random maps all over the walls of my house, mostly freebies that my coworkers at the book store, knowing my interest, have passed along to me. Looking around right now I can see a “Rail Map of Europe,” “World Terrorism: a Reference Map,” and this odd, black and white, line drawing map of Illinois, among several others. When I live somewhere with enough room, I intend to have several atlases. Thus, I was excited to find today a book called You Are Here by Katharine Harmon. It’s sort of a popular history of maps with heavy focus on amateur maps, folk art maps, and maps that are related to popular culture. She is especially interested in what maps can tell us about the way we see the world. I’m looking forward to getting this one.
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