Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows (which was a favorite of Jonathan Safran Foer), floats a new idea to publishers: give away your e-books for free!
Fre-books
Astaroth, Prince of Hell
Here’s to wishing you a spooky Halloween with this piece by Micah Nathan of The Paris Review. Nathan hearkens back to his boyhood–a much simpler time of casual demon-summoning, Satanism, and the occult. This essay by our own Anne K. Yoder will satisfy any lingering desire for the four Humors.
I Tweet Therefore I am
Twitter lets writers think in public, and it’s changing the way we write, Thomas Beller argues in The New Yorker. “Does articulating a thought in public freeze it in place somehow, making it not part of a thought process but rather a tiny little finished sculpture? Is tweeting the same as publishing?”
Where Everyone’s a Cardsharp
Edward “The Godfather” Thorp has been widely recognized as the “father of card counting” since the publication of his bestselling book Beat the Dealer in 1962. Today, at 70 years old, the man’s impact on the card game is ubiquitous, but perhaps nowhere moreso than at Las Vegas’ annual Blackjack Ball.
James “Faulkner” Franco
James Franco isn’t done with William Faulkner’s oeuvre just yet. After screening his adaptation of As I Lay Dying (trailer here) at the Cannes Film Festival this year, Franco announced that he plans on bringing The Sound and the Fury to the big screen next.
Thursday Links: Reservoir Noir, Calvin & Hobbes, Early Looks, Gunter Grass, Google, DFW
Waterboro Library in Maine has compiled a list of books about “Drowned Towns,” – “Mysteries and other fiction with a featured element of intentional submerging, inundating, and flooding of towns, villages, cities, and other places as a consequence of building dams and reservoirs for water supply, hydroelectric power, irrigation, flood management, and job creation.” Also known as “Reservoir Noir.”Rare art by Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson (via)AICN Books offers early looks at The Road by Cormac McCarthy and A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon.The Written Nerd looks at the ethics of “street dates,” the “do not sell before this date, or else!” restrictions that come with blockbuster books.The IHT looks at Gunter Grass’ new memoir, roughly translated as Peeling the Onion. Earlier this month Grass told the world that the book would reveal that he had been a member of the Waffen SS during World War II. Word has it, the book is unlikely to appear in the US any time soon.Google now lets you add a Book Search widget to your Web pages. The search engine giant has also announced that it will start making public domain books available in PDF form. Here’s an example.YPTR, in amusing fashion, takes up the question of DFW and whether he will produce a novel again.
Dear Sandy, Hello
A look at Ted Berrigan‘s letters to his institutionalized wife, collected in Dear Sandy, Hello, at The Poetry Foundation.