Goodreads has unveiled its new book recommendation feature. Unlike Amazon’s feature, Goodreads’ will draw data from every book you’ve read and logged, not just those you’ve purchased online.
Goodreads Recommendations
You Would Prefer Not To… Miss This.
Thursday 11/10, come on down to 60 Wall Street for a marathon reading of Herman Melville‘s Bartleby, the Scrivener. The story was in part tied to the Occupy Wall Street movement by Hannah Gerson in a great piece for us last month.
The Experience of Being Human
Recommended Reading: Over at BOMB Magazine, Jesse Ball and Catherine Lacey discuss strategies for a non-interview, why they write, and poetry’s “direct utility toward experience.”
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Tastes Like Nostalgia
“Titles hitting shelves in the coming months are both updating heirloom recipes for a modern age, and modern kitchens, and bringing untouched dishes back into the spotlight.” Publishers Weekly highlights the resurgence of retro cookbooks as well as upcoming titles that put contemporary spins on vintage recipes. From our archives: Hannah Gersen‘s list of literature masquerading as cookbook.
Tuesday New Release Day: Agee; Mann; Cowley; Virgil; Szybist
Out this week: The Complete Journalism of James Agee; Straight Razor by Randall Mann; The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley; The Virgil Encyclopedia; and a new e-book edition of Incarnadine, the poetry collection by Mary Szybist that won this year’s National Book Award.
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The Elmore Enigma
Elmore Leonard was a very cinematic writer, yet why are most adaptations of his work so bad? Christopher Orr explores what he calls the “Elmore Leonard paradox” in The Atlantic. “Most of the early adaptations of Leonard’s crime work missed his light authorial touch, opting instead for somber noir.” Pair with: Our own Bill Morris’s essay on why Leonard was such a good writer.
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He’s on the Fence
On Wednesday, the BBC Radio 4 program Four Thought broadcasted an essay by our own Mark O’Connell that lays out a novel argument: we should embrace the value of ambivalence. (We’re not sure how to feel about that.)