Here at The Millions, we know the importance of a book’s cover (for evidence see here, here, here and here), so Margaret Sullivan‘s new project, Jane Austen Cover to Cover, has our attention. A sample of covers for Emma, available on The Paris Review‘s blog, “provides a fascinating glimpse into a variety of publishing cultures, and it reminds that even our classics are mutable, pitched to appeal to any number of sensibilities, their literary status in constant flux per the dictates of the market.”
Cover to Cover
Rewarding Attention
At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova meditates on attention and the works of Simone Weil, among them Gravity and Grace. Popova writes that Weil “wrote beautifully of attention as contemplative practice through which we reap the deepest rewards of our humanity.”
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Brackets Busted
How’s your bracket doing? Upsets abound not only on the hardwood but also in The Morning News’s Tournament of Books. Celebrate your victory over lesser bracketologists (or, alternately, mourn your defeat against the onslaught of superior bracketologists) with this compendium of basketball poetry compiled by the folks at the Poetry Foundation.
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Talking Fails
Mark O’Connell discusses Epic Fail with Lauren Eggert-Crowe at The Rumpus. Contrary to what its title may lead you to believe, Mark’s book has been described as “expertly researched” and “wonderfully witty.”
Saying Without Saying
Giles Harvey discusses the ways in which Anton Chekhov’s characters — as dramatized in his stories and a new stage production — “long to express their innermost desires … but instead they find themselves saying things like, ‘Why did I go out to lunch?’ “
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Lacking Lacks
Henrietta Lacks is finally getting some credit for her genome’s contribution to science. The subject of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was formally recognized by the US National Institutes of Health for her HeLa cells.