Did you think the title of the most recent book you read could’ve been improved if it had been a bit more straightforward? Then Better Book Titles is for you. Among their more inspired retitlings: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Gay Jewish Magicians Kill Nazis), Blink (Everyone is Racist), and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (The First Book I’ve Read in Six Years).
Better Book Titles
What Was I Saying?
Recommended Reading: “Happy Birthday to Me” by Nicole Sealey
●
●
Salton Sea as Holy Land
“Every journal is a confessional. If it’s in the first person, it cannot help but be. Unless the author of it lies to himself—and that makes it even more of a confessional. For some reason, travel brings out confessions one would never make at home. I am trying to draw the rake of my journal over the landscape. Perhaps I will uncover something.” Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s new collection of travel journals, Writing Across the Landscape, is out now. Travel on back to The Millions for Kate McCahill’s essay on traveling with books.
●
●
7x20x21 Recap
If you didn’t make it to BEA this year, first be thankful that you didn’t have to eat any of the food around the Javits Center. Then, check out some of the highlights from the comfort of your desk chair. I recommend Ami Greko and Ryan Chapman’s perennially excellent 7x20x21 panel, which this year featured Nate Silver, Dan Wilbur, and Sheila Heti among others.
●
●
Indie Strong
“Like actual endangered species, independent bookshops induce a fiercely protective kind of love; paradoxically, it’s often their precarity that saves them.” The Guardian profiles Philippe Ungar and Franck Bohbot, the men behind “We Are New York Indie Booksellers,” which features the 50 remaining indies in and around Manhattan. (Pair with: Janet Potter‘s history of bookstore love).
Baby Belle
Precocious hardly begins to describe the early work of now-famous child fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson. If you’re like me–a clueless/skeptical johnny-come-lately–check out this post, in which Tavi documents and explains the Blanche DuBois outfit she’s worn to school and her take on Tennessee Williams‘ most famous heroine.
His first step was to contact a real estate agent
In this week’s London Review of Books Elif Batuman has a great piece about Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, both the book and the place. It would pair well with our own Lydia Kiesling’s award-winning essay on the book from 2010.