Knopf publicity bigwig Paul Bogaards kindly plunked us onto his Hierarchy of Book Publishing: The Top 100. We’d note that we’re run out of basements throughout the NY-metro area (and not just NJ), but we’re too busy telling the Stieg Larsson estate to eat our dust.
Hierarchy of Book Publishing: The Top 100
Rabbit Run
“[C]hildren often prefer the factual over the fantastical. And a growing body of work suggests that when it comes to storybooks, they also learn better from stories that are realistic. For example, preschool-aged children are more likely to learn new facts about animals when the animals are portrayed realistically as opposed to anthropomorphically.” Two new studies suggest that where learning is concerned, realism trumps fantasy in children’s books. Which is as good a time as any to ask our own Jacob Lambert‘s question: Are picture books leading our children astray?
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Chronic City, Come Alive
In an interview with Jonathan Lethem, the NBCC’s Jane Ciabaratti offers, inter alia, a sympathetic reading of Chronic City; both have more affection than Kakutani did for what Lethem calls “the claptrap contraption plot I invented.” Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal, in a flash of inspiration, assigns the book to the estimable Alexander Theroux – the only non-Latin writer who can credibly use the word “prosopographical” in a review. (But, attn editor: “not a jot” twice? in subsequent paragraphs?) A marathon bi-borough reading of the entire novel continues tonight at McNally Jackson.
TransAtlantic Sneak Peek
The folks at Goodreads provide an exclusive sneak peek at Colum McCann’s forthcoming novel, TransAtlantic. The book, which will publish in June, was featured on our Great 2013 Book Preview a few months back.
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Not Your Father’s Canon
Electric Literature has launched the “Read More Women” series—a “stripped-down, feminist version” of the New York Times “By the Book” column—which will feature writers recommending books by women and non-binary authors. First up in the series is Maria Dahvana Headley, author of The Mere Wife.
Appearing Elsewhere
A few days ago, Amazon announced the launch of their new “@Author” feature for the Kindle, whereby readers can click on an e-book passage and ask the author questions about it directly. I’ve broken out in a cold poststructuralist sweat about this over on The New Yorker’s Book Bench blog.
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Reclusive Reading
Emily Dickinson didn’t get out much, so why should we have to in order to read her work? Her open access manuscripts, letters, and envelope scribbles are now available online in the Emily Dickinson Archive. But now there’s controversy over who is the rightful owner of her manuscripts and who should shape the archives — Harvard or Amherst?
Ways of Seeing
Overt at JSTOR Daily, Allana Mayer writes about visual literacy in the age of the Internet. As she explains it, “We have similar stories all throughout history: the moment when a perception—whether a literal way of seeing or a figurative mode of thinking—is assaulted and fundamentally shifts.” Pair with our own Bill Morris’s piece on the new Whitney Museum.
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