Tim O’Connor’s sweet story of falling in love in the cinema.
Straight out of a movie!
Ready, Set, Goals
Octavia Butler did everything she set herself to do in this ambitious to-do list—courtesy of the Butler Archive at the Huntington Library in San Marino.
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Wednesday Links
We've heard about the weak dollar making things tough on Canadian readers, but the pain is being felt by Canadian publishers as well, as profit margins diminish. The latest casualty is publisher Raincoast Books.Philip Agee died today. His Inside the Company in 1973 may have created a modern day genre, one that would be contributed to by many former agents, the CIA tell-all.The Atlantic reaches deep into the archives to bring us "The History of Children's Books," from 1888:It is hard to imagine a world without books for children. There have been children's stories and folk-tales ever since man first learned to speak. "Many of them," in Thackeray's words, "have been narrated, almost in their present shape, for thousands of years since, to little copper-colored Sanscrit children. The very same tale has been heard by the Northmen Vikings, as they lay on their shields on deck; and by the Arabs, couched under the stars in the Syrian plains, when the flocks were gathered in, and the mares were picketed by the tents." Children's books, however, are a late growth of literature. Miss Yonge says, "Up to the Georgian era there were no books at all for children or the poor, excepting the class-books containing old ballads, such as Chevy Chase, and short tales, such as The King and the Cobbler, Whittington and his Cat." We shall nevertheless see that there were English books for children (and it is with no others that we have to deal) long before this time.
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David Mitchell’s Opera; David Mitchell’s Japanese Books
Working with composer Michel van der Aa, David Mitchell has written an “occult opera” entitled “Sunken Garden.” Meanwhile, the former head of buying at Waterstone’s has shared the Cloud Atlas author’s list of his favorite Japanese books. (h/t Sarah Emily Duff)
Did We Mention That the Night Is Young?
The hard-partying New York Times had us seeing double this morning.
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The Readability Myth
Is readability a myth? In an article for The Atlantic Noah Berlatsky argues that there are no "easy" or "difficult" books, or rather that these are relative terms - a book that gives one person fits may be light reading for someone else. His argument pairs interestingly with our own Emily Colette Wilkinson's "Difficult Books" series.
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New Story by Bobbie Ann Mason
Recommended Reading: “Whale Love” by Bobbie Ann Mason and Meg Pokrass.
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Bookchat on the Internet
Recommended Reading: What we talk about when we talk about books.
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