According to Millions reader James who emailed Random House, the publisher has plans to put Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 out in fall 2011. Millions contributor Ben has covered much of the news surrounding Murakami’s mysterious new novel, which was recently published in Japan, including the recent revelation that there will be a third volume.
1Q84 Coming Fall 2011
The Best ‘Homemade’ Video Games
“Video games are worth loving, but loving them comes with shame. Not passing regret or social embarrassment, but a sharp-edged physical guilt: the hunch-backed, raw-fingered, burning-eyed pain that comes at the sad and greasy end of an all-night binge. You have ostentatiously, really viciously wasted your life; you might as well have been masturbating for the last nine hours—your hands, at least, would feel better.” Gabriel Winslow-Yost reviews the best “homemade” video games for n+1.
Translating Lorem Ipsum
Nick Richardson has some fun on the London Review of Books blog by discussing the challenges of translating Lorem Ipsum, a bit of filler Latin/Greek nonsense text that resembles an “extreme Mallarmé, or a Burroushian cut-up, or a paragraph of Finnegans Wake.”
Felt Succeeds Where Words Fail
Spike Jonze and Olympia Le-Tan collaborate on a short, creepy, bookish sex romp, animated in felt and set in Shakespeare and Company. Via The Dish.
No Shyster, He
Thanks to the efforts of Gerald Leonard Cohen, the world now knows where the word “jazz” came from, why certain types of sausages came to be called “hot dogs” and how New York got the nickname “The Big Apple.”
Purity from Prison
“I was interested enough in WikiLeaks, state transparency, and emergent opposition networks to do five years in prison over such things, but I wasn’t interested enough that I would have voluntarily plowed through 500 pages of badly plotted failed-marriage razzmatazz by an author who’s long past his expiration date simply in order to learn what the Great King of the Honkies thinks about all this.” Barrett Brown reviews Jonathan Franzen’s Purity from prison. Pair with our own Lydia Kiesling’s review of the book.
Down, Set, Read
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck is the NFL’s unofficial librarian. According to his teammates, Luck is a voracious reader who regularly recommends books in the locker room. The genre is unimportant; Luck reads everything from books on concrete architecture to Love Life by Rob Lowe. Where is the Football Book Club when you need them?
Monday Links
On this sad aniversary, the Pioneer Press provides a small selection of 9/11 books and movies.Ed does a great job reviewing Haruki Murakami’s new collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Kudos to him for penning a thoughtful and thorough review.The AP writes up a new video game based on the Christian apocolyptic Left Behind series of books. The novels have sold more than 63 million copies according to the story.This made me a little queasy: A teacher in Hurst, Texas has ignited an interest in reading among her students by having them all read a book together… James Patterson’s young adult thriller Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment. Whatever it takes, I suppose.