A South Korean designer has created “a translucent plastic tray with a slot for your reading material – be it paper, magazine or book – and a specially marked spot for mugs.” The idea is to prevent unfortunate coffee spills from ruining your morning newspaper. Or, you know, you could just stop being so clumsy.
How Do You Turn The Page?
Like TED for books
The annual Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference wrapped up earlier this week, but, thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can relive the magic: Transcripts and videos of notable speeches are available on the conference’s website, including the concluding talk on the future of the novel by China Mieville.
More Top Books for 2009
More lists of the top books of 2009 are coming out. Now up: Amazon’s favorites. Tops on their list is Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, recently named a National Book Award finalist.
Bearded Bards
Gilbert Alter-Gilbert (of “Literary Pets” notoriety) is the author of the new book Poets Ranked by Beard Weight. To celebrate its publication, 50 Watts‘ Will Schofield has posted some of his favorite excerpts.
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Claudel Wins Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Philippe Claudel’s novel Brodeck’s Report has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The book was released in the U.S. as Brodeck and sounds mighty intriguing.
He Started It
Those of you with brothers or sisters will not be surprised to learn that siblings who are both writers tend to be a wee bit competitive. In a piece for the Poetry Foundation, Casey N. Cep runs through a few famous examples, among them the Bröntes, the Wordsworths and Charles and Mary Lamb. (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)
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What Is Grief?
“Is grief a condition of love? Does grief prevent us from making peace within ourselves and with each other?” For the Kenyon Review, Rosebud Ben-Oni writes on grief as waiting. Pair with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Millions essay on grief and art.