Jeff Chang, whose Can’t Stop Wont Stop I just can’t recommend enough for anyone interested in the history of hip hop, has a great piece in the LARB on rap music and the 1992 LA Riots. The LA Times also ran a compelling essay on Toddy Tee, N.W.A. and other prescient west coast MCs, the forefathers of what became commercial gangsta rap.
I work nine to five and ain’t a damn thing changed
Stieg Larsson-mania
Proof of a publishing feeding frenzy: It's big news that a bunch of manuscripts that the late Stieg Larsson wrote when he was 17 have turned up.
Rebecca Hunt’s Mr. Chartwell
At The Washington Times, my review of Rebecca Hunt's Mr. Chartwell, a shaggy dog novel about Winston Churchill's "black dog" (depression).
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Neil Gaiman Lane
The Ocean at the End of the Lane is now an actual lane. Neil Gaiman's hometown, Portsmouth, England, named a bus lane after his novel last Sunday. Sadly, the magical Hempstock family doesn't live at the end of it.
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“We are not supposed to be in the study. The books live in the study.”
Year in Reading alumna and New York Times Book Review editor Parul Sehgal writes about her childhood reading habits. Millions readers should take a keen interest in this write-up for a couple reasons: 1) it's awesome; and 2) the other half of her "we" is our associate editor, Ujala Sehgal.
Library Tour
The al-Qarawiyyin library, the oldest library in the world, has just reopened after years of renovations. Take a look inside. Andrew Pippos writes about private libraries and what they reveal about their readers.
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