A new library has been designed for the small village of Huairou on the outskirts of Beijing. Instead of adding a new building inside the village center, the architects chose a site in the nearby mountains, a pleasant five minute walk from the village center. “In doing so we could provide a setting of clear thoughts when one consciously takes the effort to head for the reading room.”
Liyuan Library by Li Xiaodong Atelier
But just maybe you’ll beat the odds
If you find yourself in a sporting mood, you can place a bet on who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I personally like Alice Munro’s 20/1 odds for taking the award, though Haruki Murakami’s 10/1 make him the safer bet.
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Thank Your Mother
Recommended (and timely!) reading: Christy Wampole on why “You Will Never Be Able to Thank Your Mother Enough.”
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Williams Reads “Stuff”
Recommended Listening: Joy Williams reads her story “Stuff” from The New Yorker’s July 25th issue.
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Linkage
The CS Monitor has a little piece about the travails of teenage novelists: “A youthful sensation doesn’t always translate into a distinguished literary career. For many teen authors, that first book proves a hard act to follow. Some never again meet with the kind of praise critics heaped upon their first offerings.”Speaking of (once) young phenoms, Bret Easton Ellis has a flashy new Web site that promotes his upcoming novel, Lunar Park. I’ve never read Ellis, but the Web site seems to indicate that this upcoming novel is about a character named Bret Easton Ellis, and it may or may not be autobiographical. Very meta. There’s an excerpt in there too.I’ve been enjoying EarthGoat lately. It’s a group blog out of Iowa City.
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Cohen’s New Old Ideas
Leonard Cohen’s new album Old Ideas is getting glowing reviews. Slate says of Cohen, “When it comes to lyrics, he’s second to no one—including Dylan.”
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Dear Diary
This week in Bookends: in which Thomas Mallon and Pankaj Mishra muse on which writer’s journals are really worth reading. Here’s a bonus Millions piece on Bookends for all those New York Times devotees.
Curiosities: The Governor and the Glove
Hitchens looks back at the Rushdie fatwa and its legacy of censorship.The Feltron 2008 Annual Report“The Governor and the Glove” – an encounter with BlagojovichJoseph O’Neill remembers Updike (via TEV)Ted Leo performs Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.”The Paleolithic era of online news.TNR reviews Outliers: “It is an axiom of Malcolm Gladwell’s method that a perfect anecdote proves a fatuous rule.“
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