The wonders of modern book packaging applied to some classic tomes. For example, 40 Days and a Mule: How One Man Quit His Job and Became the Boss. (via)
Book Titles, If They Were Written Today
Scenes from a Marriage
Recommended Reading: Year in Reading alumna Emily Gould revisits Chris Kraus’s “cult feminist classic” I Love Dick, as it appears for the first time in the UK.
LA Times Lays Off Reviewers
The Los Angeles Times book review laid off its entire staff of freelance book reviewers.
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Colbert 2012
Fresh on the heels of his gargantuan New York Times Magazine profile, as well as the announcement that he's led Jon Huntsman Jr. in the South Carolina polls, political prankster Stephen Colbert has decided to run for "president of the United States of South Carolina." This, of course, is not the first time he's pulled this stunt, but it is the first time he's done it with this much funding. All of this raises the question of whether this is political satire or "School House Rock on Steroids." But don't get too excited. Apparently folks from the Palmetto State will not actually be able to vote for him.
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Marxman
Recommended: Max Strasser on the late Eric Hobsbawm.
Glint of the Diamond
“Andre Dubus's literary superpower is to hit upon that one thing about a character that makes him him, or her her. And in so doing, with subtle, clever details—breadcrumbs on the trail to the nucleus of a character—he makes a reader want to keep going, because she knows exactly who these people are and has to know what happens to them.” On the Selected Stories of Andre Dubus.
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“Put your right hand on the Kindle and repeat after me.”
The weird and fascinating history of books used in swearing-in ceremonies gets its latest entry: the new Ambassador to Switzerland just took the oath on her personal Kindle.
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