This year’s Tournament of Books comes to an end today, after nearly a month of analyses, debates and thoughtful arguments. In the final round, Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life squares off with James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird, both of which are, in Héctor Tobar’s words, “unorthodox, historical novels.” Now that the verdicts are in, the only question is: who won? (You could also read the quarterfinal judged by our own Lydia Kiesling.)
Final Round of the Tournament of Books
Gorey and Macabre
Eve Bowen takes a trip to “Gorey Preserved,” an exhibition of “nearly every edition of every work published by [Edward] Gorey, in addition to illustrations for dust jackets and magazines, etchings, posters, and design ephemera,” on display at Columbia University until August 10th. Those unable to attend need not fret—Bowen walk readers through a history of the prolific illustrator’s work and includes plenty of links to his drawings online.
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Tomorrow!
This past week GOOD laid off most of their editorial staff, including former Executive Editor and creator of the #realtalk From Your Editor tumblog Ann Friedman. Posting some extra #realtalk on her blog yesterday, Friedman announced that the band of former GOOD editors are looking for work and also launching their own magazine: Tomorrow.
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Drawing Autism
A recent Curiosity noted autistic British artist Stephen Wiltshire drawing the New York City skyline from memory. A new book Drawing Autism will collect the work of other autistic artists. Wiltshire chose not to be in the book because he didn’t want to be seen as “just” an autistic artist. More from the book.
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Next Up, the Auckland Teal
As part of their ongoing efforts to monopolize all kinds of waterfowl, the good folks at Penguin, headed by the editor Jonathan Bell, have dug up old covers from the company’s defunct imprint, Pelican. The Guardian set up a slideshow that lets you scroll through a selection.
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Tuesday New Release Day
New releases this week: All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang, “a writing-school success story” according to the New York Times in its review, Obama’s Wars, the latest book by legendary reporter Bob Woodward, Listen to This, a collection of essays published by music critic Alex Ross during his 12-year career at The New Yorker, and (almost new) is David Grossman’s To the End of the Land, as reviewed by Rayyan Al-Shawaf for The Millions.
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“I am thankful for death”
It’s fun to imagine what literary titans might have thought had they witnessed modern pop culture. In that vein, here is a monologue, delivered by T.S. Eliot, on seeing the play Cats for the first time.
Not-Paper Planes
We’re not supposed to call it a hypertext, but when you’ve got some time, try playing around with Paul La Farge‘s website for Luminous Airplanes – which will eventually grow to encompass three times as much material as the print edition of the book.