Christopher Michel discusses The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov – a book that challenges the long-held consensus that Nabokov was merely an aesthete.
Necessary Nabokov
“Sing for our time, too.”
Photographer Stefano De Luigi, featured in the latest New Yorker, traces the route and oral tradition of Homer’s The Odyssey using only an iPhone.
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AbeBooks’ Most Expensive
Online used book marketplace AbeBooks rounded up the most expensive books sold via its site in October. At the top is a collection of Scottish music from 1782 that went for $8,500. Also on the list are some collectible Tolkien and Hemingway. (Thanks, Laurie)
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The Myth of the “Knausgaard-free Day”
Did Karl Ove Knausgaard’s autobiography become so popular in Norway that the country had to institute “Knausfaard-free days?” Casey N. Cep investigates.
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The Case for Picture Books for All Ages
Amitava Kumar makes a case for more images to appear in literature for adults, as tools to prompt questions and multiple interpretations.
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Ready, Set, Goals
Octavia Butler did everything she set herself to do in this ambitious to-do list—courtesy of the Butler Archive at the Huntington Library in San Marino.
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The Bolshoi is Back
If consecutive profiles in The New York Times and The New York Review of Books are any indication, the reopening of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre is a very big deal. To celebrate from the comfort of your chair, however, you can listen to the overture from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky‘s opera The Voyevoda, which opened in the Bolshoi in 1869.
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The Power of Awwwws
Let’s all take a momentary break from literary coverage so we can watch a wedding proposal so sweet and wonderful, it’ll make you totally forget how much you hate its accompanying song.