Robert Pinsky writes about “three essentials for reviewers” of books.
Robert Pinsky on Book Reviews
Street Smart
Fancy a stroll? Flaneur, a new Berlin-based magazine, profiles one street per issue. It explores the culture, literature, people, and landmarks that make each street unique. The first is Berlin's Kantstrasse. Pair with: Hyperreal Cartography, a tumblr of "real maps of places that exist but don't."
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The links
The Telegraph links all their reviews of Booker longlist titles from one page. If you want to get a look at these literary hotshots, there's a photo gallery, too.Ed has read Chuck Klosterman, and he's not very happy about it.The First Post, a new British online magazine leads with John Irving's book reviewer-bashing.
Colors: Definitions and Names
Kory Stamper, one of the lexicographers responsible for Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, describes the pleasures and poetry to be found in the Third Edition’s “color definitions.” Take vermillion for example, which is listed as “a variable color averaging a vivid reddish orange that is redder, darker, and slightly stronger than chrome orange, redder and darker than golden poppy, and redder and lighter than international orange.” (Related: how colors got their names; who names colors what.)
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Welcome Bill
The Millions is adding a new staff writer today. Join us in welcoming Bill Morris. Bill most recently wrote a consideration of China Miéville for the site this week, his fifth piece for us thus far. Bill is the author of the novels Motor City and All Souls' Day. His writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, L.A. Weekly, the (London) Independent, the Washington Post Magazine and the website Aolnews.com. He lives in New York City.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Rakow; Hauser; Le Guin
Out this week: This Is Why I Came by Mary Rakow; The Baker's Tale by Thomas Hauser; and Late In the Day, a new collection of poems by Ursula K. LeGuin. For more on these and other recent titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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Return of the Ferrante
"According to an interview with her publishers in the Italian literary newsletter Il Libraio, translated in The Guardian, Ferrante is putting pen to paper once more." A year after Elena Ferrante's alleged true identity was revealed by a journalist, the intensely-private author is writing again but has no plans to publish a novel in 2018. Pair with: staff writer Marie Myung-Ok Lee's essay on Ferrante, privacy, and woman writers.
“You Need a Rhyming Word? That’s What We Heard!”
Sesame Street turned in a literary puppet parody in their Sons of Anarchy send-up: Sons of Poetry.
Reading While Writing
"I learned through imitation, but it was only when I followed—or found—my own voice that I was able to derive a different kind of inspiration from reading fiction, something subtler and more expansive. Today, when I reach a wall in my own work, I turn to authors I love to remind myself what is possible: that sentence, that structure, that daring twist of plot." Chloe Benjamin, who just yesterday published a piece on choosing book titles for The Millions, writes about the dangers and rewards of reading while writing for Poets and Writers' Recommends series.
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