Let’s all take a momentary break from literary coverage so we can watch a wedding proposal so sweet and wonderful, it’ll make you totally forget how much you hate its accompanying song.
The Power of Awwwws
Picture of Alienation
In 2006, Gene Luen Yang became the first graphic novelist to be nominated for a National Book Award. Yang earned a nomination in the Young People’s Literature category for the graphic novel American Born Chinese. Now Yang has been nominated a second time, again in the Young People’s Literature category, for a new book, Boxers and Saints. Francoise Mouly and Mina Kaneko talk with Yang at Page-Turner. (You can also read our interview.)
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iRumpus
The Rumpus is coming to your iPad or iPhone. The magazine just launched its new app, The Weekly Rumpus. The app features the best of The Rumpus’s weekly content, original short fiction, and upcoming articles every Wednesday. The app and its first issue are free, but you can subscribe for $3.99 a month or $25.99 a year.
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Barnes & Noble to Go the Way of Borders
According to a report for The Wall Street Journal (paywall), Barnes & Noble will be lessening its floor space allotted to traditional books in order to make way for more Nook displays. Over at Melville House’s blog, MobyLives, publisher Dennis Johnson speculates that this move could signify the end of the road for Barnes & Noble as a bookseller.
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The Remains of the Screen
“Any reasonably skilled novelist can evoke on the page the texture of memory, drawing the reader into the half-remembered, the blurred edges, the nervous nostalgia, the meandering associations across time and geography. In contrast, flashbacks on screen tend always to be clumsy beasts, announcing their arrival with unwanted fanfare and knocked-over furniture. Why is this?” Kazuo Ishiguro on film, and other novelists’ second-favorite art forms.
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Colum McCann Reads
Listen to National Book Award winner Colum McCann read from Let The Great World Spin and discuss his prize-winning novel with Wellesley’s “reggae novelist” Colin Channer.
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The Billionaire Speaks
“It’s true that when the world did not end when I predicted it would, at the end of last year, in my Netflix special Ragnarok, I realized a number of things, one of which was that I had not made a lot of professional or creative plans on the contingency that the world would continue. I just figured that it would end.” Greg Hunter talks with John Hodgman at The Rumpus.