American readers can now get their hands on the latest from Martin Amis, Lionel Asbo: State of England. Also out this week: The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle, Paul Auster’s memoir Winter Journal, Dan Fesperman’s spy novel The Double Game, and a pair of debuts, Hanna Pylväinen’s We Sinners and Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist.
Tuesday New Release Day: Amis, LaValle, Auster, Fesperman, Pylväinen, Coplin
AutoSummarizing the Classics
Graphic designer Jason Huff takes the one hundred most downloaded copyright-free books and reduces them (pdf) using Microsoft Word 2008’s AutoSummarize 10-sentence function. Book Bench highlights several of the absurd - if occasionally poetic - results.
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A Mother’s Love
One Romanian woman may have committed “a barbarian crime against humanity” by incinerating a collection of seven famous paintings – including Picasso’s “Harlequin Head,” Monet’s “Waterloo Bridge, London,” and Gauguin’s “Girl in Front of Open Window.” Her excuse? It was in order to protect her son – a skilled art thief – from prosecution.
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Smartphone Stories
Despite what we might think, smartphones aren't destroying good reading habits. Rather, smartphones are enabling access to books in developing countries, according to a new study. They allow readers to find books in remote parts of the world without libraries and at a cheaper price.
‘Tiger’ Wins an Orange
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Hilary Mantel’s Torment and Joy
In her Shelf Awareness interview, Hilary Mantel admits that Wolf Hall, her recently released Bring Up the Bodies, and the trilogy’s forthcoming conclusion were originally conceived to be one book. That they kept expanding, she says, is “the torment and joy of writing fiction.” Meanwhile, over at The Daily Beast, the English author rounds up her five favorite historical fictions.
The Pathos of Reno
“My friend Kathy was a Mustang Ranch girl in the eighties, had a line on how to bring cocaine into town, and was party girl central and making a lot of money. She was in the center of it in a way that my characters can see but they can’t ever get to. Reno is a beautiful, beat up, and weird town devoted to this false notion of luck. It’s a beautiful place.” Talking with Christian Kiefer.