Radiohead can typically do no wrong in the eyes of fans and culture pundits, but author Ian Rankin describes how even these indie heroes got him stuck in customer service hell: ” no e-mail address; no phone line; no possibility of human contact.”
Oh No, Computer
Finding the Fairy Tale Capital
Where is the fairy tale capital of the world? Atlas Obscura investigates. We write about the problem with fairy tales.
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Patrick Reardon looks at 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die for the Chicago Tribune, and decides he wants to add his own favorites. Check out his eclectic list at the end of the piece. (thanks Steve)Maud mentioned off-hand that she abandons 95% of the books she starts before page 50. Sandra posted that this was "quite a failure rate," and Maud responds in the comments that in this case she was "pining for a very specific kind of manic reading experience that happens for me maybe ten times a year now rather than every few days, as it did when I was a child."Dogbert writes a book: "It's part fake autobiography and part plagiarism" (via H2O)Pinky is about to start an MFA program at Pitt. The reading list looks excellent.Harper Lee will have an item in O of all places. According to the AP story, "a letter for Oprah Winfrey's magazine on how she became a reader as a child in a rural, Depression-era Alabama town." It's for the July "special summer reading issue."
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And the Award Goes to…
"Proulx’s deep reverence for the beauty and complexities of rural America has introduced millions of readers to the wide breadth of American life. Her commitment to crafting compassionate, honest stories has left an indelible mark on literature and created a powerful and enduring legacy." Annie Proulx nabs the National Book Foundation's lifetime achievement award. Check out her Year-in-Reading entry from this past year here.
“Refuge in the bottle and salvation on the page”
Olivia Laing has written an entire book about male writers and their relationships with alcohol, The Trip to Echo Spring, but in a piece for The Guardian she returns to the subject of writers and drink in order to respond to the question, what about women writers? Were any of them alcoholics? "Yes," she writes, "of course." She goes on to discuss the lives and work of Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, Elizabeth Bishop and Patricia Highsmith, their reasons for drinking and their experiences in a society much more willing to accept the struggles of men than of women. For more from Laing, be sure to check out her Year in Reading for 2013.
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Nobel Streak Stays Alive for University Press
Last year we highlighted University of Nebraska Press among other small presses for the keeping in print otherwise little known future Nobel laureates. Today's honoree Mario Vargas Llosa is quite well-known by comparison, but University of Nebraska Press has nonetheless (barely) run its Nobel streak to three straight years by way of Vargas Llosa's inclusion in the press' soccer writing anthology, The Global Game: Writers on Soccer.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Green; Simsion; Harrison; Israel; Enniss
New this week: Saving Grace by Jane Green; The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion; The Bishop’s Wife by Mette Ivie Harrison; The Global War on Morris by Steve Israel; and After the Titanic: A Life of Derek Mahon by Stephen Enniss.