Did you forget that The Morning News Tournament of Books starts today? If so, I bet you’re glad you saw this reminder. Have fun.
ROOSTER!
Skip The Hangover III. Read A Book Instead.
Sean Manning boldly declares Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season — John Gregory Dunne’s first novel — to be “the best book about Sin City ever written.” And yes, he knows what you’re thinking. He really does think it’s better than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
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Stephen Fry’s Culture Shock
Stephen Fry uses the Alabama-Auburn Iron Bowl to summarize the state of America.
Ken Jennings Debunks Space Myths
Because I Said So! author and Jeopardy all star Ken Jennings is debunking space myths all month over at Woot. In his first installment, he looks at just how much money was spent to develop NASA’s “space pen.”
The 80-page Rule
How do you know if the book you’re writing is going to fly or flop? Try writing the first 80 pages without worrying about the outcome as Meg Wolitzer does. “Eighty pages is enough pages for a writer to feel she’s accomplished something, but it’s not so many pages that, if she decides to put aside the book, she’ll feel as if she’s wasted her life,” she told the Daily Beast for its “How I Write” series. It must work because we loved The Interestings.
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Talking History
On the topic of reading classics: Alberto Manguel at the New York Review of Books considers the dialogue across history that books afford. “The relationship between a reader and a book… eliminates the barriers of time and space, like ‘conversations with the dead.'”
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Where the Books Are
Ever visited a new city and found yourself in need of a bookstore? Well, if it happens again, and you’re in the US, you can just use Google Maps, which now features the locations of the country’s public libraries and bookstores. (h/t Bookforum)