Freedom, The Imperfectionists, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet were some of the biggest books of the year, both literally and among our readers. But which one of them could stop a bullet for you? Electric Lit posts a video of the necessary research.
Which Book Can Save Your Life?
Some Good Stuff
Two great scoops were passed my way by the intrepid Brian, fresh from his European sojourn. The first is this so-wierd-it-has-to-be-true story about Newt Gingrich being an extremely prolific and friendly Amazon.com customer reviewer. Click here for the must-read gory details.While in Spain, Brian read Robert Hughes’ new book Barcelona: The Great Enchantress from the National Geographic Directions series and noticed on the back cover that Jon Lee Anderson, the New Yorker’s Baghdad correspondent extraordinaire, has a book for the series coming out. It will be about Andalucia. This will be a busy year for Anderson. In the fall, his fantastic Baghdad pieces will be collected in The Fall Of Baghdad and he will also release Guerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World, which ought to be quite good.
Monkey Shakespeare
Who was it that came up with the idea that a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters would eventually, with their random keyboard smashing, type William Shakespeare’s complete works? Well, you can give the experiment a try here (link from the CC). And while you’re waiting for your monkeys to finish typing Love’s Labor’s Lost, check out some book excerpts I found:Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick — excerpt, NYT review, SF Chronicle reviewChain of Command by Seymour Hersh — excerpt, CS Monitor reviewThe Double by Jose Saramago — excerpt, NZ Herald reviewThe Fall Of Baghdad by Jon Lee Anderson — excerpt, WaPo review
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Monday Linkday
Don’t bother looking for that book you need, a robot will do it for you. Will browsing disappear as robots take over libraries?Mad Max Perkins, “currently a senior executive for a major New York publisher,” has entered the world of blogs. Who is this masked man?Moleskine, maker of the world’s greatest notebooks, has added the Story Board Notebook to its ever expanding line of notebook products. “Advertising creatives, graphic designers, filmmakers, and cartoonists” rejoice!I enjoyed reading an excerpt of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta. A good pick for anyone with an interest in the subcontinent.
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Noted News Items
Paul Auster is still getting mileage out of a short story that appeared in the New York Times on Christmas day 1990. “Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” was subsequently released as a limited edition book illustrated by Brian Cronin. The story became the inspiration for the films Smoke and Blue in the Face. Now, Henry Holt is releasing another edition of the story. This time the book is illustrated by an Argentinean artist named, cryptically, ISOL. Here’s the story if you want to read it.The London Review of Books is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and to mark the occasion, the Guardian sits down with LRB editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers.The CS Monitor continues to provide its capsule reviews of the National Book Award nominees. Here are the reviews for the young adult category.
Monday Linkday
I’ve mentioned here before that I’m currently getting my masters in new media journalism in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. As such, expect to see the occasional post on the topic from here on out. To that end, I want to mention Dan Gillmor’s book We the Media. Gillmor is well-known for his blog which is, broadly speaking, about the blogging phenomenon itself. The book takes on the question of where blogs fit into the panoply of the media. It’s worth a look for anyone who’s wondered if these here blogs are good for anything beyond killing time in their cubicles. Best of all, the entire book is available for free at the publisher’s website.That’s enough new media for now. In other news Michael Chabon’s new Sherlock Holmes tale, The Final Solution: A Story Of Detection, is out tomorrow. We’ll see what the reviews bring, but in the meantime, take a look at this excerpt.Finally, have a look at this: A Colorado man is compiling “The Great Library Card Collection.”
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Definitely Adam Levin’s “The Instructions.” Weighing in at 1,030 pages, I think it could stop just about any bullet.
Nothing short of Bill Vollmann’s seven-volume Rising Up and Rising Down is likely to stop a bullet.