Etgar Keret is a rising (if not risen already) literary star, but these days, following the publication of his new collection Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, “he seems to be growing complacent, bored even, with his talent,” writes Joshua Furst.
Resting On One’s Imaginative Laurels
TransAtlantic Sneak Peek
The folks at Goodreads provide an exclusive sneak peek at Colum McCann’s forthcoming novel, TransAtlantic. The book, which will publish in June, was featured on our Great 2013 Book Preview a few months back.
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Book bits – Sherlock, the Unbearable Dave Matthews, Renaming Google Print
Stanford “will rerelease a collection of Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of Sherlock Holmes, just as they were originally printed and illustrated in The Strand Magazine.”Maciej Ceglowski suggests that Milan Kundera “is the Dave Matthews of Slavic letters, a talented hack, certainly a hack who’s paid his dues, but a hack nonetheless.” And offers up a number of Eastern European books that young lovers might give to one another instead of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.Google Print has been renamed Google Book Search. “Why the change? Well, one factor was all the comments we got about how excited people were that Google Print would help them print out their documents, or web pages they visit — which of course it won’t.”
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Rithy Panh’s The Elimination
“Imagine a society in which money has been banished. A society in which you would be arrested if you wear eyeglasses, if you wear ties, or if you speak a foreign language.” The Coffin Factory‘s Randy Rosenthal takes a look at Rithy Panh’s The Elimination, an autobiography focused on his adolescence during the reign of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.
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A Daredevil By Any Other Name
Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life might well be the only book in history to draw comparisons between creative writers and stunt pilots. At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova calls attention to a description of Dave Rahm, the real-life pilot who inspired Dillard’s analogy.
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