Last week, a lot of people were disappointed by Time‘s decision to “water down” the latest issue’s cover for its American audience. As a follow-up, ShortFormBlog takes a look at the publication’s history of doing this, and also their reasoning.
Time Magazine Goes Soft
Some Choice DFW Links
GQ offers an insightful interview with The New Yorker‘s Deborah Treisman on the subject of editing David Foster Wallace…while elsewhere, the German translation of Infinite Jest – Un Endlicher Spass – becomes an unlikely hit. (via)
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Ould Soul
You may have heard that the actor Peter O’Toole passed away in London on Saturday. As a tribute, Longform republished a 1963 profile of O’Toole by Gay Talese, who accompanied the Lawrence of Arabia star on a trip to Ireland.
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Thursday Links
Alas, the Tournament of Books is over for my bracket as it was revealed that the “Zombie Round” brought Against the Day and Absurdistan back into the competition. With my finalists now officially out of the competition my bracket is dead, and it looks like I’ll finish in the middle of the pack. Meanwhile, fresh off the Oprah selection shocker (more on that in my next post), I’m think The Road is a lock to win this thing.Book Chronicle has organized an award for litblogs. In my post about book blogs being snubbed by the major blog awards, I argued that book blogs didn’t need to recognized in this way to legitimize them. Still, I do appreciate Book Chronicle nominating The Millions for their award.Harry Potter obsessives can now have a look at the cover for the final book in the series.The Paris Review has given its $10,000 Plimpton Prize for Fiction to Benjamin Percy, for his story “Refresh, Refresh,” which is excerpted on magazine’s Web site.Tom Bissell reviews Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at Wet Asphalt.
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Oxford to the Rescue!
Ready to have your mind blown? There is an English word that rhymes with “orange.”
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Pink Matter
No doubt inspired by the musical stylings of Ricky Rozay (aka Rick Ross), Peter Foges set out to investigate the origins and present state of pink champagne.
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Real Talk
“These conversations push Leonard outside his sister’s house and put him on a course complete with time travel, an unreadable ancient text, Jewish Mysticism, and an attractive reference librarian. And here’s where the trouble starts.” On Rachel Cantor’s A Highly Unlikely Scenario.
Domino Effect
2,131 books and 27 volunteers helped The Seattle Public Library set the record for longest book domino chain earlier this month.
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#ManlyBookClubNames
Literary Twitter has been on fire with #ManlyBookClubNames since The New York Times style section reported that apparently men have book clubs, too. “Perhaps because participation in reading groups is perceived as a female activity, some all-male book clubs have an outsize need to proclaim the endeavor’s masculinity.” If you’re looking for a book club, consider joining Adam Boretz’s Football Book Club.
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