Can kids’ books on a tablet beat the real thing? A father of two takes a reading test.
Read Me an E-Book
The Story Writer and His Writer Friend
Beautiful Ruins author (and Year in Reading favorite) Jess Walter describes “the genesis of a story.”
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Shelf-Love
Do you want to show off your bookshelf online without typing up a list of your books on Goodreads? Well, you strange exhibitionist, you can do that now with Bookshelfies, a Tumblr featuring pictures of people standing in front of — well, you know.
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Cary Fukunaga to Direct WWII Flick
An unpublished novel by ESPN the Magazine editor Paul Kix will be adapted into a movie by True Detective director Cary Fukunaga. The project is known as Noble Assassin, and it will concern a French aristocrat who trains with British Special Operations in hopes of one day returning to his native country to lead the World War II resistance.
A Political Wrinkle in Time
A deleted passage from A Wrinkle in Time has been rediscovered and released, and it spells out a more nuanced political philosophy for the novel. That’s what The Wall Street Journal is saying, anyway.
Sic
We’ve published essays before on the importance of good grammar, but it’s rare that something comes along that illustrates its value so clearly. A couple weeks ago, the Times published a blurb about This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a recent essay collection by Ann Patchett, that led to the author sending in what may be the best correction of all time. For more on Patchett’s work, you could read Kevin Charles Redmon on her book State of Wonder.
…And If You Still Want More on The Pale King
I can’t recommend John Jeremiah Sullivan‘s 7,000-word article on The Pale King highly enough – not because he gets everything right, but because it’s what long-form writing about books should look like: passionate, lucid, wide-ranging, and awfully fun to read. I salute GQ for running it, and hope to see more literary coverage there in the future.
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Centireading
“You can be acquaintances with many books, and friends with a few, but family with only one or two.” On rereading the same books – in this case Hamlet and The Inimitable Jeeves – 100 times.