This week in book-related infographics: “24 Books You Can Read in Under an Hour.“
Read Fast
The Primetime Magicians
Jonathan Franzen and Chad Harbach aren’t the only two authors adapting their works for television. Lev Grossman is working on an hour-long Fox series based on his novel The Magicians.
From Flesh to Wafer to Cash
Here’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the communion wafer’s place in free-market capitalism.
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Are Book Blurbs Helpful or Harmful?
Man Booker judge Colin Thubron expressed frustration with gushing book blurbs, which he says “almost blackmail” readers: “you’re either intellectually or morally incompetent if you don’t love this book or you’ve failed if you haven’t understood it.” Our own Bill Morris tackled the age old question—”To Blurb or not Blurb”—a few years ago.
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What We Need Is
You may have heard about Google Poetics, which compiles Google Autocomplete entries that add up to a Horse_ebooks-like whole. At The Toast, Emma Jones takes these entries and writes them up as poetry proper.
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Books and Bankruptcy
McSweeney’s has a personal account of the end of an antiquarian book business. This is a bummer (the bankruptcy, not the writing of Bill Cotter, a very pleasant man to whom I once tried to sell a book). (Via).
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