If you don’t have any weekend plans, we suggest you spend your time on the British Library’s new Victorian and Romantic section of Discovering Literature. The site features 1,200 literary treasures, including a manuscript of Jane Eyre and 20 short documentaries.
The Best of 19th Century British Lit
Tigers on Your Tablet
“Calvin and Hobbes“ is going from print to digital. Now, you can read the strip of the boy and his famous tiger as a series of e-books: The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, and The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes.
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The Leonine Vladimir Sorokin
Now online: PEN World Voices video of Keith Gessen interviewing Vladimir Sorokin, author of the just-released Ice Trilogy and Day of the Oprichnik. I was a little nonplussed by the Times‘ decision to begin its profile of Sorokin with a discussion of his hair, but really…it is quite something. Come for the mane, stay for the acerbic insights.
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Force Feeding
“I am uncomfortable in my role as witness.” Nehal El-Hadi writes for The New Inquiry about the online spectacle of black death, exploring what “Black thanatosensitive” user experience design might look like. And ICYMI: our own Ismail Muhammad on Frank Ocean and depictions of the black male body.
Bohane Wins the IMPAC
Kevin Barry has won the lucrative €100,000 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his first novel City of Bohane, capably reviewed in these pages over a year ago by Bill Morris (whose drawing of Barry illustrates the piece). You can also relive this year’s massive longlist and quirky shortlist.
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New Hardcovers with Paul Ingram
Watch beloved bookseller at Iowa City’s Prairie Lights Paul Ingram talk about this season’s best hardcovers. I loved getting his recommendations in person, and this is almost–almost!–as good. (via.)