Recommended Reading: Eileen Battersby on a new translation of the Russian writer Nikolai Leskov.
“The equal of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Turgenev”
We Can Get Behind This
We would be remiss not to mention this new 'Fifty Shades of Muppet' trailer. Pair with our own essay on literary predecessors in published fan fiction.
Pythonated
We’ve published a fair number of pieces about the import of book covers. You may have read one of our US-UK book cover battles. Over at The Awl, Amanda Pickering takes a look at one of the stranger aspects of book design: the animals that appear on the covers of programming books.
His Dark Resignation
Phillip Pullman, author of the much-beloved His Dark Materials series, has resigned as a patron of the Oxford Literary Festival due to the festival's practice of not paying its guest authors. This move comes only one week after Pullman and the Society of Authors released an open letter to The Publisher's Association and the Independent Publisher's Guild, demanding authors receive fair compensation for their work.
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“Best Speech on the Future of Books & Publishing”
Richard Nash's keynote at Booknet Canada: it's not about "getting published" it's about "happiness," which is about "connecting." Chris Anderson of Wired tweeted, "Best speech on the future of books and publishing I've ever seen."
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More Barthes
In part because I loved Sam Anderson's riff on Barthes in this weekend's NYT Magazine so much, I was thrilled to see Maud Newton tweet this link this 2010 article on Barthes's handwriting, featuring a slideshow of note cards Barthes used to compose his Mourning Diary.
Smile More
Recommended (Frustrating) Reading: "Men Explain Submissions To Me," an eye-opening new piece from Sarah Blake at The Rumpus.
For Whom The Bell Tolls
No, not "whom"! - The death of a word.
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