Two ways of looking at a book: “Had I been still more articulate, I might have said that there’s a special readerly pleasure in approaching a book as you would a box. In its self-containment lies its ferocious magic; you can see everything it holds, and yet its meagre, often hackneyed contents have a way of engineering fresh, refined, resourceful patterns. And Emily might have replied that she comes to a book as to a keyhole: you observe some of the characters’ movements, you hear a little of their dialogue, but then they step outside your limited purview. They have a reality that outreaches the borders of the page.”
Double Sided
Lazy Sunday
The Chronicles of Narnia ebooks are on sale on Amazon today only for $1.99 a piece.
●
●
Moleskine’s Imminent IPO
A while back, I noted that Moleskine was preparing an initial public offering on the Italian stock exchange. Well, now the time has come. On April 3, you will be allowed to buy shares of the notebook company (and perhaps keep records of them within your Moleskine). If you’re interested, you might want to read up on the company’s history – and also on how to pronounce its name.
The Headless Horseman
“Every culture has its monsters,” and Jason Diamond writes about the Headless Horseman and one of the oldest American horror stories for Electric Literature.
●
●
Embracing Tackiness with Rax King
Rax King discusses her intimate and hilarious essay collection and defining tackiness as "utter unselfconscious sincerity."
●
●
●
There’s Franco in My McCarthy
Sometime Ph.D candidate, sometime actor, and ubiquitous lit blog all-star James Franco (henceforth known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”) has begun filming an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God in West Virginia, and I’m reminded of that line from W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming” — “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
Tuesday New Release Day: Tosches, Saramago, Maurois, Buarque, Light
Out today are Me and the Devil by Nick Tosches; Raised from the Ground by Jose Saramago; Climates, a newly translated novel from 1928 by French writer Andre Maurois; Spilt Milk by Brazilian writer Chico Buarque; and Alan Light’s The Holy or the Broken about a Leonard Cohen song that Jeff Buckley made famous.
●
●