Alexander Nazaryan joins legions of hand wringers in this short rumination on children’s reading and e-reading. Me, I just want it both ways.
But I wanna have it both ways.
With One Eye Squinted
“I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.” The New Yorker reports on “Flannery O’Connor‘s Manhattan Memorial” and pitch-perfect quotation.
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The Great Indie Bookstore Tour
In 2013, poet and bookseller Alan Brandsted approached Seattle’s Wave Books with an interesting proposal: in exchange for a box of galleys and gas money, he would embark on a cross-country mission to “spread the good word of poetry to independent bookstores.” What followed is the ongoing Indie Bookstore Tour, which is being chronicled on Tumblr (hashtag “#wavepoetrytour”) and Instagram. (First Tumblr post can be found here.)
The Kirkus Is Back in Town
The recipients of the 2016 Kirkus Prize have been announced, among them the novel The Sport of Kings by C. E. Morgan and In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi, a meditation on her father’s gender transition, in the non-fiction category. We reviewed two of the other fiction finalists this year: Carousel Court (here) and The Underground Railroad (here).
From Abkhazia to Zimbabwe
“[W]e can confirm that there is no place on Earth (not even Antarctica) that literature isn’t written.” Michael Barron, the U.S. literary editor for Culture Trip, curates “The Global Anthology,” an online project showcasing more than 220 pieces of literature from all over the world written in or translated into English (via Moby Lives).
“Let me eat it all and let me eat it now!”
“McDonald’s, I am here and I am hungry, feed me, let me eat it all and let me eat it now! Oh, what a hymn, what a hallelujah you sing to me, two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun.” Michael Murray imagines “Jack Kerouac‘s Lost Restaurant Reviews” for Hazlitt and they are absolute joys.
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The Ziggy Stardust Bookclub
David Bowie hasn’t performed live in seven years, but he has a good excuse — he’s been reading. His top 100 books are part of the “David Bowie Is” traveling exhibition (currently in Toronto.) The list reveals that he’s a big fan of American lit, including Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys, Saul Bellow’s Herzog, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, and more. He’s also an amateur rock historian, naming Charlie Gillete’s The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll and Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom among others. When can we sign up for the class, Professor Bowie?
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Going Clear
“While guys spent time in these Seg cells calling out chess moves over the walkways or doing push-ups until their veins bulged from their temples, I was in my cell pecking away trying to create a different world for myself. Some kind of way I felt I could rewrite my future.” For The New Yorker‘s Page-Turner blog, Daniel A. Gross tells the story of the Swintec Corporation, the nation’s sole supplier of clear typewriters, whose largest market is prisons. Pair with our own Bill Morris on using his Royal to write.
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