Careless Drivers

J.K Rowling is a vandal! The billionaire and author of the Harry Potter series left her mark in an Edinburgh hotel room when she scribbled some graffiti on the back of a decorative bust back in 2007. “J.K. Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room on 11 Jan 2007,” it reads. Oh, I suppose that’s okay.

At the Guardian, Alain de Botton, author of the forthcoming Religion for Atheists, considers whether “museums of art are our new churches” and says “modern museums of art fail to tell people directly why art matters.”

The Telegraph publishes a piece by Paul Theroux in connection with his new book about travel lit, The Tao of Travel. In the piece, Theroux recounts some of the great feats of the genre.

“Save everything, she said. Everything. When your archive gets bought, they pay by the cubic foot.” Sarah Manguso in The New York Times about drafts in an era of digital writing. And while we’re on the subject , here’s what Ben Fountain, Emily St. John Mandel, Emma Straub and a passel of other writers have to say about writing that elusive first draft.

“With thirteen other diners, the two professors of English first prepared and then made their way through eight courses, including beef broth, haddock, steak, mutton, chicken, and chocolate profiteroles….The dinner was a recreation of one eaten 132 years earlier, in one of England’s grandest country houses. Among the guests at this first dinner was George Scharf, founding director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, a man not especially famous in his own day and virtually unknown in ours.” Love Among the Archives brings us into the world of George Scharf, a bachelor affectionately deemed “The Most Boring Man in the World.”

Bookseller Mark Godburn, who is working on a book about nineteenth century dust jackets, has  a neat gallery of early jackets and accompanying info at his website.