Nominees for The Bookseller Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year have been announced. My favorite, which to me is not odd at all actually, is Bacon: A Love Story. Scatology abounds in this list, including: Peek-a-poo:What’s in Your Diaper, and The Origin of Faeces.
Oddest Titles of the Year
A Moveable Photo
What do you get if you combine Man Ray with some of the most celebrated artistic figures of 1920’s Paris such as Ernest Hemingway, Lee Miller, and Marcel Duchamp? The answer is: some predictably fantastic portraits. For more on Man Ray, here’s a moving essay on how his Hollywood Album redefined Liska Jacobs’ idea of a “life’s work.”
Digital Tolstoy
“Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s entire body of work – all 90 volumes – along with comprehensive biographical materials has been posted online and will be available for free, a descendant said.”
On Yesterday’s Earthquake
In both pizza and geological terms, the East Coast is known for its thin crust.
Tuesday New Release Day: Barry; Critchley; Tranströmer; Kolaya; Angell
Out this week: Beatlebone by Kevin Barry; Memory Theater by Simon Critchley; Bright Scythe: Selected Poems by Tomas Tranströmer; Charmed Particles by Chrissy Kolaya; and This Old Man by Roger Angell. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
Writer-Collector
"I do not find it unusual that many writers I know acquire vintage clothes, buy old homes, and rescue animals. For one, we don’t have Wall Street salaries, and secondly, we’re suckers for backstory, particularly that which is left to the imagination. Our job, after all, is to make up lives, engage in epic games of pretend." Megan Mayhew Bergman writes for Ploughshares about collecting cast-off objects, "the chaos of memories," and becoming a writer. Pair with David L. Ulin's reflection on Bergman's essay and the way we think about memory, written for the LA Times.
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“It really is a different life”
Donna Tartt has a new novel out, and with it come new interviews. At Salon, Laura Miller sits down with the author behind The Secret History.
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Eat Your Heart Out, James Patterson
Meet Philip M. Parker, a marketing professor at INSEAD Business School and the man whose name graces the covers of over 100,000 books. Is he the most prolific author of the modern age? Well, kind of. Thanks to “a computer system that can write books about specific subjects in about 20 minutes,” Parker and his company have combined to create over 800,000 titles currently listed on Amazon – including such works as The Official Patient's Sourcebook on Spinal Stenosis and Webster's Icelandic - English Thesaurus Dictionary.
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