For only $1,750, you can buy Eugene O’Neill’s monogrammed boxers at Johnnycake Books.
A Longjohn’s Journey Into Night
Madame Bovary Trailer Released
Just released: a trailer for an upcoming film adaptation of Madame Bovary starring Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre?). Pair with our review of Lydia Davis‘s 2010 translation of Flaubert‘s classic.
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Conquest of Panic
Irving Howe asks how Hemingway commanded the attention of a generation. Howe writes, “His great subject, I think, was panic.” Our own Michael Bourne recently answered this question, recognizing Hemingway as a middlebrow revolutionary.
Reading Courtside
From the WSJ, NBA players who read books, some of them pretty good (books and players, I guess). Also, the old “Phil Jackson gives his players books” anecdote is a familiar one, but who knew he passed out copies of 2666? (Thanks, Craig)
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Better Book Reviews
Darryl Campbell has had enough of the clichés abundant in book reviews so he’s devised some alternatives. “If fine artists aren’t your thing,” Campbell writes, “then maybe American presidents might be a better comparison: ‘Taft-like excess,’ ‘Cleveland-esque genre-bending’ or ‘Clintonian eroticism’.”
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e-lending leads to more reading?
According to a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life project, library patrons borrowing ebooks tend to read more than readers who aren’t borrowing ebooks. Galley Cat parsed some of the data if you’ want the short rather than the long of it.
BOMBlog Double
Two fantastic interviews are up on BOMB Magazine‘s BOMBlog: In the first, Millions contributor Matt Jakubowski speaks with Shards author Ismet Prcic, and in the second, Swamplandia! author Karen Russell does a Q&A for San Francisco’s Litquake.
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Stay Away from the Semicolon
“The Crested Asterisk camouflages itself in poor syntax, relying on this tactic to confuse its predators and prey. It is the only specimen known to cause injury by way of over-emphasis.” Introducing a field guide to rare punctuation.