Meet the latest woman to join the “Billionaire’s Club.” Her name is Sara Blakely, and she invented Spanx.
Now That’s What I Call an Elastic Product!
“Oh, you Irish—you’re such MAR-velous storytellers”
The Testament of Mary author Colm Tóibín was interviewed as part of the President’s Reading Series at Johns Hopkins University, and he spoke about the difference between “being a reader, and being an Irish reader.”
I’ll take “Maps” for a thousand, Alex.
"Jeopardy!" champion Ken Jennings charts “the wide, weird world of geography” in his latest book Maphead. NPR investigates his process in a “Fresh Air” interview. Scribner Books provides a small sample as well. While discussing the particulars of America’s “Road Geeks,” Jennings makes it clear to this listener that he’d probably be interested in Cynthia Enloe and Joni Seager’s The Real State of America Atlas, which was reviewed by our own Bill Morris last July.
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Master of Happy Scenes
Norman Rockwell was an unhappy and enervated man who became iconic by painting scenes of happy, energetic people. He developed a style that became synonymous with idyllic visions of America. At Page-Turner, Lee Siegel reads Deborah Solmon's American Mirror, a new biography of Rockwell that acknowledges the painter’s contradictions without “mocking or scolding” him for the gulf between his life and his art.
Always Changing
Recommended Reading: The always hilarious (and very Southern) David Sedaris on shopping in Tokyo and "the perfect fit."
Familiar Choices
At NPR’s blog, Meg Wolitzer chooses five summer books that deserve more attention from readers. If you’re a Millions regular, though, you may find her selections a wee bit familiar, seeing as we reviewed Jessica Soffer’s book, interviewed This Is Running For Your Life author Michelle Orange and published The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards author Kristopher Jansma.
“My awareness and relationship with covers began nearly a decade ago.”
Craig Mod’s superb take on book cover design in the digital age, “Hack the Cover,” is really worth the read.
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Alice Walker on Screen
Still deciding what to do this Friday night? Watch PBS's new documentary on Alice Walker, Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth, at 9 p.m. EST. At The Daily Beast, Agunda Okeyo discusses the history of the film's production, which took six years. "Stories about women of color told by women of color are sidelined and neglected in favor of our stories being told by white women and men," director Pratibha Parmar says.
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Reading Dickens in Lagos
George Packer at Lapham’s Quarterly writes of meeting a young Burmese reader of Charles Dickens: “‘All of those characters are me,’ [he] explained. ‘Neither a British nor American young man living in the twenty-first century can understand a Dickens as well as I can...I am more equipped to understand Dickens than modern novels. I don’t know what is air conditioning, what is subway, what is fingerprint exam.’” (via Book Bench)
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