New this week: Clive James’s translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Edward O. Wilson’s Letters to a Young Scientist, Amity & Sorrow by Peggy Riley, and The Carrion Birds by Urban Waite.
Tuesday New Release Day: Dante, Wilson, Riley, Waite
Behind the Beautiful Forevers Headed to the Stage
The National Theater in London plans on adapting Behind the Beautiful Forevers into a stage production, reports John Williams. Don't miss Paul Morton’s Millions interview with Katherine Boo from last year.
Out of Sight
On the New Yorker’s Elements blog, our own Mark O’Connell writes about Cloak, a new app which lets you avoid people you don’t want to bump into by accident. Despite the fact that Mark can see himself using the app, he finds it “ultimately troubling,” in large part because it strikes him as “such a lonely thing to have achieved through technological control of our social environments.” (Speaking of apps, have you read Mark’s epic e-book?)
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I will tell you this Rosalina, not as a taunt or a threat but as an evocation of joy.
From Werner Herzog's letter to Rosalina, the woman he employs to keep his house: "Music is futile and malicious. So please, if you require entertainment while organizing the recycling, refrain from the ‘pop radio’ I was affronted by recently. May I recommend the recitation of some sharp verse. Perhaps by Goethe. Or Schiller. Or Shel Silverstein at a push."
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Everyone Has a Book in Their Stomach
Want to get your book published? Move to Iceland. One in ten Icelanders will become published authors, which isn't a big surprise because the country has a 99 percent literacy rate. Pair with: our essay on Icelandic writer Sjón.
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A Disturbance in the Force of the Joyce Estate
Our own Mark O'Connell likens James Joyce's grandson to a "highbrow Darth Vader."
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Hollywood Takes on the Business Book
Andrew Ross Sorkin's financial crisis post mortem Too Big to Fail is slated to get the Hollywood treatment. Curtis Hanson will direct the likes of Paul Giamatti as Ben Bernanke, James Woods as Dick Fuld, and Billy Crudup as Timothy Geithner. (Thanks, Derek)
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