We’ve all been there, right? Your neighbor lends you a book, you don’t treat it very carefully, she complains, so you thrust a samurai sword inches from her face. It happens.
The Perils of Book Lending
The Pulitzer Bump
Just how much does winning a Pulitzer Prize help sales? Quite a lot, it seems. When Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer, it was ranked #27,587 overall in book sales on Amazon. As of this morning, it is sitting pretty at #61.
King James
"He is the king, after all, and kings don’t lead revolutions. They rule wary of them." Just about everything that Rowan Ricardo Phillips has to say about basketball is recommended reading at this point, and this piece on Lebron James and kingship is no different. This older piece on Steph Curry and the sustainability of brilliance is an early highlight.
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Fuck Yeah, NYRB
Who says publishers have weak brands? Someone loves the NYRB Classics so much they started a Tumblr blog about them. It is called, appropriately, Fuck Yeah NYRB Classics!
Something Out of Something
BOMB Magazine is collaborating with Farrar, Straus & Giroux to commence their "Something Out of Something" design contest. Participating designers, writers, and artists are invited to "draw inspiration from the written work of Israeli short story writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret to create visual art of their own." Winners will receive $500, a personalized copy of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, and their artwork's appearance in a Keret story or film. You can read the full details on the contest's Tumblr and Facebook pages.
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Fiction Friction
"There’s more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date," Philip Roth said in an interview with Cynthia Haven for Stanford's The Book Haven. Besides his retirement from writing, Roth also discussed why he doesn't consider himself an American-Jewish writer and his book The Ghost Writer. For more Roth, read our essay on lessons you can learn from his work.
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Google Enters the eBookstore Ring
Google took the wraps off its long-awaited ebookstore today. Google ebooks can be bought at Google Books and are also available at Powells and indie bookstore portal IndieBound (both of which are missing out on some serious publicity by not having info about this on their front page today). The ebooks are readable on a variety of platforms, but not on the Kindle (at least not without some tweaking).
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Music Inspired by Literature
Have you ever wondered how Kafka’s The Trial would translate in music? Philip Glass adapted the novel, and more, to music. Read about other music inspired by literature at Ploughshares. For more on music and literature, check out our Torch Ballads and Jukebox Music column.
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