Have you taken advantage of NYRB Classics’ Winter Sale yet? A whole bunch of their books are listed with 50% discounts! Why not check out The Radiance of the King, which was recommended this past Year in Reading by Deborah Eisenberg? (And also recommended by Junot Díaz back in our 2007 edition of the series, too.)
NYRB Classics Winter Sale
Striking New Book Covers
The cover art for some highly anticipated forthcoming novels has been unveiled. Both C by Tom McCarthy and Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis are sporting eye-catching designs.
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On Bad Reviews
Recommended (Archival) Reading: “The language is too rich and poetic for my liking” and other gems from Amazon one-star reviews of classic novels, dredged up in 2014 by Electric Literature. Pair with the worst book review ever written.
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Language is a Passport
Haruo Shirane writes for Public Books about writing and publishing in the age of English. As he explains it, “For those living in the Anglosphere, no barrier seems to stand between their world and the many other worlds that now appear at the push of a button. But for those outside that world, particularly in non-European countries, the literary and linguistic consequences of globalization in the age of English can often be severe.”
Hemingwrite
Modern technology has finally developed a device that aims to aid all perpetually distracted writers – the cleverly titled Hemingwrite.
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The Historic Multitudes of bell hooks
For The New York Times, Min Jin Lee recounts the paradigm-shifting experience of reading bell hooks as a sophomore at Yale.
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Citation, Please
Fun Fact: British radio and television presenter Alan Partridge (a fictional character played by Steve Coogan) is referenced in not one, not two, but seven entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh, you cheeky Brits.
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The Art of Fear
At some point, Machiavelli became Machiavellian, which is to say that his personal views evolved into the self-centered credo we recognize. At Salon, an excerpt of a new biography of the writer, which digs up the formative events of his early life.
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O’Brien’s Bridge
If the Dublin City Council doesn’t name their newest bridge after Flann O’Brien, writes Frank McNally, then perhaps the author’s memorial should be built in Paris, Zurich, Trieste, or “any of the other great European cities to which he didn’t emigrate.”