What Ails You
How About Hairballs
“For about 15 years, every time I had a really good dance party that went late, with people lolling around drunk and exhausted, at about 2 a.m., I would hand out paper and ask everyone to draw a vomiting cat. . . . I ended up with an incredibly thick file of drawings, some by people who went on to be published cartoonists and writers.” The New York Times reports that (Year in Reading alum) Jonathan Lethem has sold his papers to Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, a trove that includes comic books, manuscript drafts, notes, letters, and yes, drawings of vomiting cats. You can read our review of Lethem’s Dissident Gardens, which may or may not feature hairballs in a crucial plot point, here.
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Who Wrote the First Mystery Novel?
“Never mind whether the butler did it. Here’s a real mystery for you: Who wrote the first detective novel?” Paul Collins at the New York Times takes another look at the usual suspects.
A Sign of the Apocalypse?
The singularity is near: If you go to your Amazon recommendations page, you’ll see that you can now log into Facebook from there “to get Amazon recommendations for you and discover your friends’ Favorites and Likes.”
I Want YOU to be the Next Tournament of Books Judge
Do you have what it takes to be a judge in The Morning News’s annual Tournament of Books? If so, your application better be in by midnight Friday.
Brave New Books
“In the new environment, science fiction writers needed new formulas – or even better, needed to have the courage to operate without pre-cooked recipes of any sort. In short, science fiction needed to grow up and take on the adult world, in all its messiness and uncertainty.” Ted Gioia pens a paean to sci-fi writers of the 1960s. Among his recommendations (including a reading list of 64 works): Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch, whose larger oeuvre is considered here.
HBO Turns Down The Corrections
HBO turned down the television adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, despite an all-star crew: Franzen himself adapted the novel to television, Noah Baumbach promised to direct the series, and Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal were cast as leads. Novelist A-J Aronstein can now breath a sigh of relief; they won’t be filming The Corrections at anyone’s house.
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The Translation Life Cycle
Recommended Viewing: What actually happens when a book gets translated? Publishing Trendsetter has an infographic of a translated book’s life cycle complete with interviews with a foreign rights agent and a translator.
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