Recommended Reading: Laura Miller’s argument for writing in books. You could also read Sam Anderson’s marginalia in Dan Brown’s Inferno, as well as his Year in Marginalia from 2010.
Mark It Up
From the Crawleys to the Capulets
Romeo and Juliet is getting the Downton Abbey treatment. The first trailer for Julian Fellowes’ adaptation is out and features Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth as the ill-fated young lovers.
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Now That’s Will Power
How dedicated is Robert Caro to his task of identifying and faithfully portraying the character of Lyndon Johnson? So dedicated that he turned down free tickets to see Bryan Cranston’s play about the 36th President of the United States of America.
On the Limitations of Language
Over at The Point, Spencer McAvoy writes about the language and vision of Joy Williams, a writer who “instead of drawing boundaries between us and whatever Other, posits language as an experience of self-limitedness.” Williams’s new collection of short stories, The Visiting Privilege, is one of the most anticipated books of 2015.
Where the Wild Things Are
“After breaking down the data by neighborhood and age group, it became clear: Children’s books are a rarity in high-poverty urban communities. The likelihood that a parent could find a book for purchase in these areas ‘is very slim.’” On book deserts across America.
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Underground Poetry
Three cheers, NYC commuters, for the return of Poetry in Motion, the project which pairs poems with artwork on subway trains.
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Speed Reading
Is your to-be-read list a little daunting? Check out some tips from BBC on how to read faster. If you’re looking for reading suggestions, check out our fiction and non-fiction previews.
Strange and New
Last week, I pointed readers to an article about Michael Faber’s latest book and his decision to quit writing fiction. Now, in the Times Book Review, Marcel Theroux sizes up the novel, writing that “the reader is drawn through the book effortlessly, by the combination of incidental strangeness and the suspenseful handling of plot.”
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On Blackness
Over at the Literary Hub, Morgan Jerkins writes about the struggle to describe blackness. As she puts it, “My hope is to create imperfect, multitudinous black women who are more in tune with themselves than their audiences.” Pair with our own Michael Bourne’s list of books that “shed light on the history and evolution of racism in America.”
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