Upon the release of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, the Times profiles the spotlight-shy Katherine Boo, “Unlike many journalists Katherine Boo aspires to invisibility.”
The Times on Boo
iWalser, iBradbury
David Wright recommends five works perfectly suitable for smartphone reading.
Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies Coming in May
Big news for fans of Hilary Mantel and her Booker-winning (and Millions Hall of Famer) Wolf Hall. The U.S. release date for the much anticipated Wolf Hall sequel Bring Up the Bodies has been moved up from the fall to May 22nd to coincide with the U.K. release date.
Early Inspirations
Why do great books we read as children have a more profound effect on us than great books we read as adults? It’s hard to say, but YA novelist Anne Cardi comes up with a number of reasons, among them the ability of children’s books to permanently change our viewpoints. (FYI, we asked a bunch of teenagers to recommend last year’s best YA novels.)
●
●
The New Republic’s New Reader
The New Republic, which was recently acquired by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, has started a super clean, neat little news reader.
●
●
World Literature Dispatches
Some world literature links: Sign and Sight offers the best introduction to Herta Müller I’ve been able to find…The Complete Review gets the ball rolling on Roberto Bolaño’s (very) early novel Monsieur Pain, forthcoming from New Directions…Ingo Schulze, author of the quietly astonishing New Lives and the forthcoming One More Story, talks to The Toronto Star (via)…The NBCC features Yu Hua‘s Brothers…Claudio Magris is crowned the king of Frankfurt…Maud Newton hails Juan Gabriel Vásquez‘s “inventive and intricately plotted” The Informers…The Brooklyn Rail and Transcript both offer handsome online digests of short stories from around the world.
Children Coming Together
Lynda Barry illustrates Carrie (of horror fame) and Heidi (of childhood book fame) meeting for the first time.
●
●
The True Face of the Earth
As Le Petit Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, “The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.” Perhaps that can be extrapolated for satellites, too. Either way, if this incredible, orbital HD Vimeo footage doesn’t move you, then I don’t know what could.
●
●