Eighteenth century literature lives: This Christmas, Jack Black will play Gulliver in an adaption of Jonathan Swift‘s Gulliver’s Travels. See the preview here.
Lemuel Gulliver Redux
Eliot Reflects on “Prufrock”
The 92nd Street Y has released a never-before-heard 1950 recording of T.S. Eliot reading many of his most famous poems and delivering comments on craft.
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Rails both Real and Metaphorical
“America has always been built—and continues to be built—by those the establishment keeps invisible.” Public Books runs the sixth installment of its “An Engineer Reads a Novel” series, this time taking on Colson Whitehead‘s Underground Railroad and John Henry Days. We also recently reviewed the former, which has been blessed by both Oprah Winfrey and President Obama.
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Single-Serving Atwood
Ebook purveyor Byliner continues its foray into fiction with a new story by Margaret Atwood: “I’m Starved for You” (Here’s an excerpt)
Did You Say Sudoku
“Tsundoku: the acquiring of reading materials followed by letting them pile up and subsequently never reading them.” Do you buy books and let them languish? According to Ozy, there’s a Japanese word for that. Might we encourage your tsundoku habit by encouraging you to look at this list of our favorite October releases?
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This Is Just to Say [VARIABLE VARIABLE]
I’ve noted before how William Carlos Williams’s famous poem, “This Is Just to Say,” has become an internet meme, but I haven’t noted the ongoing and delightfully random “Just to Say” Twitter bot. And also, I haven’t before linked to Tammy Ho Lai-Ming’s riff on Williams’s rhythms.
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Amazon on Translation
“This year, AmazonCrossing plans to publish ‘77 titles from 15 countries and 12 languages’ in the United States, which will almost certainly dwarf the output of Dalkey and its ilk. And, with this new $10 million commitment, the number of works in translation published by AmazonCrossing should continue to soar. Which means that AmazonCrossing will almost certainly be the largest publisher of translated literature in the United States for at least the next five years.” At The New Republic, find out how Amazon became the largest publisher of translated works. Our own Michael Bourne breaks the news that Amazon has purchased the English language.