Revealed: Lord Byron’s personal copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The book will be exhibited at Peter Harrington, Chelsea’s world-renowned rare bookshop, later this month.
Lord Byron’s Frankenstein
Fiction in Motion
If you see something, read something: Yesterday New York City’s MTA launched Subway Reads, an eight-week-long initiative allowing strap-hangers to download novellas, short stories, or excerpts from books via the city’s new(ish) wi-fi service in 175 underground stations. They’ve even timed the length of Which news in turn begs the question: what would Borges say?
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On Ruined Pianos and Literary Fêtes
The Paris Review will soon move into a new office space, and while preparing for the relocation, some staffers discovered “a batch of small, white booklets” entitled “The Paris Review: Twenty Year Index, Issues 1-56.” The lists seemed to indicate everything that had been published in the magazine during its first 23 years of existence, and they also featured an introduction from founder George Plimpton – an introduction, by the way, that really depicts the Review of old better than any photograph ever could.
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A Blurb of One’s Own
Full Stop will be celebrating five years in January as an online literary journal. To commemorate the anniversary, they’re publishing their first-ever book, collecting the very best writing from their website and featuring blurbs by anyone who makes a donation to the magazine. Pair with this Millions piece on the art of blurb writing.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Johnson; Moshfegh; Berlin; Barker; Al Aswany; Cobb; Lee; Dirda
Out this week: Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson; Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh; A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin; The Incarnations by Susan Barker; The Automobile Club of Egypt by Alaa Al Aswany; Darkness the Color of Snow by Thomas Cobb; The Investigation by J.M. Lee; and Browsings by the Washington Post critic Michael Dirda. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Adler, Nabokov, Hemon, Jansma
At long last Renata Adler’s re-released Speedboat is out from NYRB Classics. The book’s attracted quite a bit of (deserved) pre-release hype. Also out today are a pair of books covered in our Great 2013 Book Preview: Vladimir Nabokov’s The Tragedy of Mr. Morn (no relation to yours truly) and Aleksandar Hemon’s The Book of My Lives. In three days you can get your hands on Kristopher Jansma’s debut novel The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards.
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The Puddlies
Powell’s Books announces their Puddly Awards. Vote for your favorite book of the last decade.
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Russian Lit Quiz
Pop quiz for all you fans of Russian literature: What’s the protagonist’s first name in Doctor Zhivago? Hint: It isn’t “Doctor.”
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