Add this to the list of incredible things you didn’t know you needed until now. At Quartz, Jenni Avins reads through a selection of hand-typed book reviews, found in the NYPL’s archives, in which librarians tear apart children’s books they find objectionable. Sample quote, from a review of Green Eggs and Ham: “There must be better ways of teaching a child to read than this.”
Dr. Seuss and The Very Bad Influence
“Made Twilight look like War and Peace”
Herewith, an amazing takedown of Fifty Shades of Grey, spoken by none other than a horrified Salman Rushdie. If a quote like this isn’t a good reason to go to The New Yorker Festival, we don’t know what is.
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Goon Squad to the Small Screen?
Well, this is interesting. HBO is looking at turning Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad into a TV series.
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How Could You Like That Book?
“On the other hand, I do spend endless hours mulling over the mystery of what others like. Again and again the question arises: How can they?” Tim Parks asks us why we enjoy reading what we read at The New York Review of Books. For Millions readers’ favorites, check out October’s Top 10.
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Human Complications
“Complacencies of the peignoir, and late / Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, / And the green freedom of a cockatoo / Upon a rug mingle to dissipate / The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. / She dreams a little, and she feels the dark / Encroachment of that old catastrophe, / As a calm darkens among water-lights.” Wallace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning” is the perfect poem to kick off the day of rest. Here’s a a brief profile from The New Yorker on Stevens’ life and art.
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*Cricket*
“It’s a book about fathers that has few good ones on display. It’s a book about language that cannot decide among many. It’s a book about bargains in which no character makes a wise one.” On Aravind Adiga’s new novel Selection Day.
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Remnick Interviewed
Robert Birnbaum has a terrific, funny, wide-ranging interview with David Remnick, a must read for all the New Yorker obsessives out there. (via Kottke)
It’s interesting that the person who wrote the negative review of “Green Eggs and Ham” misspelled “onslaught.”