How would like to receive some free issues of Poetry magazine for your book club? Poetry, by the way, answered our call in our Tumblr round-up and has since joined the platform.
Free Poetry!
Cubans, Minimalists, and Surrealists, Oh My!
A three-course feast for your eyes, dear readers: vintage Cuban movie posters courtesy of Will Schofield; minimalist book covers courtesy of Julie Oreskovich and AbeBooks; and little-known sheet music illustrations courtesy of the great René Magritte.
●
●
Battle of Editors
When a novel is printed in multiple countries, it often has more than one editor. Slate interviews Emma Donoghue; her American editor, Judy Clain; and her Canadian editor, Iris Tupholme, about how they all edited Frog Music. They discuss everything from how to deal with editing disputes to the best way to get edits. “I much prefer to get everyone’s opinions separately, because if I got a single editorial letter, it would be like getting a note from God!” Donoghue says. For more on the editing process, read about our own Edan Lepucki’s relationships with her copy editor and editor.
●
●
Shear Brilliance
Recommended Reading: An essay by novelist Siri Hustvedt on the cultural significance of hair from the forthcoming collection Me, My Hair, and I in The New Republic.
The Bechdel Test Through History
Sometime Millions contributor Frank Kovarik takes a look at Alison Bechdel’s famous test for gender bias in movies and applies it to literary classics going back to Homer.
●
●
Borrowing Made Easy
A fledgling New York tech firm has invented a new service, Oyster, that the company claims is a lot like Spotify in its workings. Their innovation? The products they’re sharing are books.
The Blood Countess
Julie Delphy‘s second film as writer/director/actress is released in Europe this month. The subject is 16th century Hungarian/Transylvanian countess Erzsébet Bàthory, known for murdering young girls to bathe in their blood and considered by some the first female serial killer. Judging from the trailer, Delphy’s film doesn’t appear to equal earlier visions of the Bloody Countess (French Surrealist Valentine Penrose‘s hallucinatory biography, for example, or Terry Gilliam‘s Mirror Queen (Monica Bellucci) in The Brothers Grimm).
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up a Library
Summer Brennan attempts the Marie Kondo approach to organizing her library and learns about the heartbreaking difficulty of getting rid of books. Pair with this Millions essay on private libraries and what books reveal about their readers.
●
●
Help Her, Miss Manners
In the pages of the Washington Post, the venerable Miss Manners responds to an English department secretary who feels “besieged by fringe ‘academics’ who are very adamant that we are part of a conspiracy to cover up the fact that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was Shakespeare.”
●
●