“The University of Bologna in Italy has found what it says may be the oldest complete scroll of Judaism’s most important text, the Torah.”
Italian Researchers Locate World’s Oldest Complete Torah
Stephen Fry’s Culture Shock
Stephen Fry uses the Alabama-Auburn Iron Bowl to summarize the state of America.
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A Death Certificate and Memorial Combined
“A ‘Complete Poems’ is a death certificate and memorial combined. After the Selected and the Collected, the Complete marks the poet’s official demise and at the same time erects a carven monument designed to outlast the ages.” At The Guardian John Banville reviews The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin which will be out on these shores in March.
I Will Not Write Unless
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Steal This Record
Elvis Costello is calling the hefty price tag on his new box set “either a misprint or a satire” and advising fans to buy a Louis Armstrong box set or to wait until the discs included in his own box set are availble at a cheaper price “assuming that you have not already obtained them by more unconventional means.”
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A Home at the End of the World
“I’m not paranoid, I’m really not.” The Washington Post has a profile of the so-called American Redoubt, an area of the Pacific Northwest populated by doomsday preppers. Pair with our own Emily St. John Mandel‘s reading list of five can’t-miss apocalyptic narratives.
Biological Music
“Seaquence is an experiment in musical composition. Adopting a biological metaphor, you can create and combine musical lifeforms resulting in an organic, dynamic composition.”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Amis, LaValle, Auster, Fesperman, Pylväinen, Coplin
American readers can now get their hands on the latest from Martin Amis, Lionel Asbo: State of England. Also out this week: The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle, Paul Auster’s memoir Winter Journal, Dan Fesperman’s spy novel The Double Game, and a pair of debuts, Hanna Pylväinen’s We Sinners and Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist.
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Rainy Day Books
Someone left a manuscript out in the rain. On their tumblr blog, Doubleday Books share two pictures of their offices repurposed to dry it out.