BLDGBLOG, which has “always been interested in learning how novelists see the city,” interviewed China Miéville about “the conceptual origins of the divided city featured in his… award-winning novel The City & The City,” among other things. Architects, fans of urban decay, and general lit nerds are going to have a field day with this link, I promise you.
China Miéville Interviewed by BLDGBLOG
Going Against the Current
Emily Harnett writes about Elena Ferrante’s bad book covers and how it embraces “women’s fiction” as a genre. As she puts it, “In a literary marketplace where the very image of a woman is seen as antithetical to literature, Ferrante’s covers take an important stand.” Pair with Cora Currier’s essay on reading Italy through Ferrante’s books.
●
●
Your Local Heroes
Thanks to the generosity of Daniel Handler, the American Library Association has launched the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity. The prize will award $3,000 and an “odd, symbolic object” of Handler’s choosing to a librarian who “has faced adversity with integrity and dignity intact.” (h/t The Paris Review)
“I can’t rely upon sex and violence to sell my books”
Meet Libi Astaire, the “Jewish Jane Austen” and a major figure in the burgeoning Haredi literary scene.
●
●
Rear Window Through One Window
Jeff Desom created a stunning time-lapse composite of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Rear Window in which you can see the events unfold chronologically from a single vantage point. More details on how Desom did it can be found on his website.
First Steps
Can a book prepare you for motherhood? A reader asks this question in the Match Book column in the Times.
●
●
Train Dreams
Wes Anderson really likes trains, and not just any trains — the director of The Grand Budapest Hotel is a big fan of riding on Amtrak. “It’s one thing to be stuck together for the long haul to New Zealand in the upper deck of a 747 for 16 hours,” he told a writer for the company’ s blog, “but it’s an altogether different matter to hit the dining car three meals a day for two and a half days running onboard the Southwest Chief.” This may be a good time to read our own Nick Ripatrazone’s essay on writers and trains.
●
●
It’s Not You, It’s Me
What to do when you and your best friend don’t like the same books.
●
●
“Other creative uses for my fuzzy matter”
Unfamiliar Fishes author Sarah Vowell steps up to bat for this month’s Believer advice column, Sedaratives. She fields questions concerning librarian crushes and dryer lint.