Tom Rachman, author of Millions Hall of Famer The Imperfectionists, has a new short story out as a Kindle Single: “The Bathtub Spy.”
Rachman’s Single
Nein, nein!
Bad news, guys: the longest word in the German language is officially no longer a word.
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Droit ou l’Ordre
Believe it or not, but the widely publicized murder case is not just a modern phenomenon. In 1761, Voltaire became obsessed with the case of Marc-Antoine Calas, a young man who was found dead in his home city of Toulouse. At The Paris Review Daily, a post on the Candide author’s impact on modern justice.
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Pete Campbell is Mr. Darcy
This summer, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis will put on a stage production of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. As they always say: it’s all fun and games until you cast Vincent Kartheiser as Mr. Darcy.
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Beware the Potterverse
In case you missed it: JK Rowling just released a new Harry Potter short story on her own promotional website. Before you get too excited: the New Republic is less than sanguine, calling it “a marketing scam.” (Code for: not very good writing?) Which is not going to keep me from reading it anyway. Readers with more restraint might note that “You don’t have to be a Barthesian grad student to chafe at Rowling’s impulse to clarify the words on the page.” (Pair with our discussion of fan fiction and the afterlife of literature.)
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The Internet and Self-Publishing
“Publishers, writers, and readers alike really need to sit down and take this trend [the rise of self-publishing] seriously, rather than using the poetry.coms and AuthorHouses of the world as straw-men, scapegoats, piñatas, or other bludgeonable what-have-yous in the same tired and ineffectual arguments about how the Internet is ruining the publishing industry.”
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Paper or Plastic?
Paper or plastic? Hey, you with the Kindle! Stop looking so smug… E-books aren’t as green as you think.
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