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
#ManlyBookClubNames
Literary Twitter has been on fire with #ManlyBookClubNames since The New York Times style section reported that apparently men have book clubs, too. “Perhaps because participation in reading groups is perceived as a female activity, some all-male book clubs have an outsize need to proclaim the endeavor’s masculinity.” If you’re looking for a book club, consider joining Adam Boretz’s Football Book Club.
“A Minor Manifesto”
Ian Crouch writes for The New Yorker about a new version of The Sun Also Rises, which gives readers a peak into Hemingway‘s drafts and revisions. Crouch believes that by reading these drafts carefully, one can pick out a “minor manifesto” that “conceives of a book with greater intellectual and artistic ambitions than Hemingway ever produced.” In the words of Hemingway’s character Jake Barnes, “Isn”t it pretty to think so?” Pair with our own review of the latest edition of The Sun Also Rises.
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Cohen on Joyce
On Bloomsday, Joshua Cohen highlights Joyce’s heirs around the world.
In Praise of the Booker
In light of Howard Jacobson’s victory for The Finkler Question, Laura Miller at Salon explains why the Man Booker Prize is the best of the literary awards.
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2012 Hugo Nominees — For Free!
John Scalzi rounded up online versions of all of the stories nominated for this year’s Hugo Award. Read up!
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Margaret Cho’s Advice
Margaret Cho’s advice for “hacking it?” Write what you think is funny, not what you think people will like.
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Raymond Chandler on How to Write Detective Stories
“The good detective story writer (there must after all be a few) competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well. And on almost equal terms; for it is one of the qualities of this kind of writing that the thing that makes people read it never goes out of style.” Raymond Chandler’s 1950 essay, “The Simple Art of Murder” is a real gem.
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The Great American Novel
How it all got started: in 1868, The Nation published an article by John William De Forest titled “The Great American Novel.” (via American Literary blog).
It’s interesting that the person who wrote the negative review of “Green Eggs and Ham” misspelled “onslaught.”