Chinua Achebe, best known for his novel Things Fall Apart, is working on a memoir to be titled There Was a Country.
Achebe Memoir on the Way
Curiosities: Precise Obfuscation
“Chris Lloyd adores a minuet / the Ballets Russes and crepes suzettes / but Foucault loves to rock n’ roll / a hot dog makes him lose control… what a crazy pair!”James Yeh and a plate of Korean barbecue co-star in: My Dinner with Shteyngart.Deborah Eisenberg reads Wells Tower.Open Letters Monthly looks at Landscape in Concrete, a lost classic from the World War II-era featuring a not-so-ÜbermenschWhat planet are translators from? Paul Verhaeghen spills the beans, in remarks from the PEN festival, (via Three percent)Novelist David Francis, guest-posting at TEV, pits the writer’s interests against those of the publishing industry.W.W. Norton “friends” the Dalkey Archive.Richard Ford tells Nam Le, “Giving a colleague a bad review is like . . . seeing a hitchhiker and rather than picking the hitchhiker up, you run over him.”The Second Pass reappraises Denis Johnson’s 1983 Angels (whose characters reappear in Tree of Smoke).Finally, a piece on Reif Larsen’s T.S. Spivet that doesn’t mention the size of his advance.After only a year, Wyatt Mason’s fine Sentences blog reaches a full stop.An amazing and cute fashion blog from a 13-year-old.The indie bookstore tour writ large: novelist Mark Fitten is visiting 100 indie bookstores and writing about it. (via Maud)Wikipedia find of the week: The Jimmy Carter rabbit incident
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Disgrace
Do you think J.M. Coetzee‘s Disgrace should be made into a movie starring John Malkovich? Someone does–see the trailer here.
Ur-Road Movie
The Golden Ticket
“As a rare book collector and head of the English department at Ayer-Shirley Regional High School, Eleanor Capasso said that being sent what she believes could be a first edition of a Jane Austen novel felt a lot like winning the golden ticket to visit Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.” Find out more about how a teacher received a two-hundred-year-old copy of Persuasion. If you’re looking for rare books, our guide has got you covered.
Write a Turtle Story, Win a Turtle Diary
NYRB Classics just reissued Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary, and in honor of that occasion Levi Stahl is giving away a free copy. All you have to do is write “the best turtle story” in his comments section before June 20th. Are you up to the task?
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It’s Science
One big round of applause for everyone; according to a new study, if you read books you will earn more money. Importantly, the cap seems to be around ten books per year–any more than this and the correlation between books read and income per year dissipates. But don’t let that stop you!
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Lauren Wilkinson Wants to Buy Happiness
Lauren Wilkinson reflects on living in tenuous financial balance in her 20s, and feeling, 10 years and a lot of MFA-based debt later, that no amount of money will ever be "enough."
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