What would happen if two percent of the world’s population disappeared overnight? HBO’s new teaser for its adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers asks us to contemplate that question. From what we see so far, it looks terrifying. The series premieres on June 15.
The Two Percent
Around the Horn
I've been noticing some of the fantastic pages that libraries and museums have put up for their book exhibits. Here's Czech book covers of the 1920s and 1930s and Civil War maps from the Library of Congress, for example.Fans of audiobooks will enjoy this essay by the pseudonymous Thomas H. Benton at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Link via OPTR.Thinking about getting rid of some books? This Ask Metafilter thread has lots of suggestions on where to donate your books.For a year, I was a bookstore employee who blogged, so the story of this book clerk in the UK who got fired for blogging hit pretty close to home.
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Whatever I choose is cool because I am cool.
The Rumpus has an interview up with Ann Friedman, executive editor at GOOD, and curator of the beloved tumblogs Lady Journos and #realtalk From Your Editor.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Barnes, Lahiri, Oz, Erdrich
Out this week: Levels of Life by Julian Barnes; The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri; Between Friends by Amos Oz; and a new paperback edition of The Round House by Louise Erdrich. For more information on these books and other new titles, check out our Great Second-half 2013 Book Preview.
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The Widening Spell
“Ah, I think, a lizard-poet. This particular category was one I had concocted years before to describe those poets who were too Olympian to mingle with the rest of us, who stood to the side, detached, having feelings.” Remembering Larry Levis, whose book of last poems, The Darkening Trapeze, was released this past week.
The Rooster Crows!
Tournament of Books fans: The official Tournament of Books bracket has been posted. Along with an introduction to this year's literary throwdown, readers can get a gorgeous bracket poster, sure to become the decorative centerpiece of any library wall.
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RIP, Shirley Hazzard
"Ms. Hazzard’s fiction is dense with meaning, subtle in implication and tense in plot, often with disaster looming: A shipwreck tears away the parents of tiny children. A man who has waited a lifetime for a woman loses her at the last moment." Novelist Shirley Hazzard, whose several books – including The Transit of Venus and the National Book Award-winning The Great Fire – received much acclaim, has died at 85, reports The New York Times. Also worth reading, her "Art of Fiction" interview with The Paris Review from 2005.
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Idolizing Hemingway
Robert Roper wonders whether or not Ernest Hemingway's death has "eclipsed his work." Elsewhere, Melville House wonders whether or not the FBI had something to do with it. The author's influence is as apparent today as ever before, though perhaps it's not his death that endures, but rather his perceived masculine mystique.
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