“When Michael reads in one of the society columns that are hilariously reprinted here, misspellings and all, that Astrid’s jewels aren’t blingy enough, he flies into a fury of inadequacy. This leads him to try to buy one of Singapore’s rarest architectural masterpieces and turn its ground floor into a museum for his car collection, which includes a car from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; fortunately, his offer is turned down.” On Kevin Kwan’s China Rich Girlfriend.
Nouveau Riche
Curious Case of the Missing Publishers
What’s going on in Hong Kong? Last week, a man by the name of Lee Bo became the fifth member of the Hong Kong-based publishing house Mighty Current, which specializes in provocative tomes about Beijing leaders, to vanish mysteriously. A few of those missing have been in sporadic communication with worried family members, letting them know in opaque terms that they are “helping with an investigation.”
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Game Theory
Recommended: Art of Fielding author Chad Harbach on sports novels.
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A Curious Win
The Olivier Awards (aka the London Tonys) went down last night, and a certain theatrical adaptation won a record seven awards. The book that inspired that adaptation? The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
2011 in Physics Books
Every year brings a fresh new crop of popular books on physics and cosmology, or so they say. 2011 was no exception, featuring books on dark matter and dark energy, the Large Hadron Collider, time, the multiverse, cosmic mortality, a bit of history, biography, and even a celebration of "fringe physics." Here is a list of top ten picks.
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Babysitting SEALs
"Write a short story from the point-of-view of a babysitter who one summer night witnesses something she never expected to see in her life, and then do a 'find and replace' in your Word doc until each instance of 'babysitter' becomes 'Navy SEAL.'" Leigh Stein shares some "Writing Prompts for Girls and Women" with The Rumpus. Pair with our own Emily St. John Mandel's review of Leigh Stein's The Fallback Plan.
At Least Not in the Central Time Zone, That Is.
First The Times-Picayune makes major cuts to its print output, and now The University of Missouri Press is shutting down after 54 years? This is not a great week for writing.
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[Video Goes Here]
“We’re seeing a year-on-year decline of text … If I was having a bet I’d say: video, video, video.” Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Facebook's European, Middle Eastern, and African regions, believes that the written word is going the way of the dodo.
Thursday Links
Mr. Sarvas aka TEV takes another turn in the limelight, this time in the Jewish Journal.Of course this story comes from a local TV news site: Pornographic comic books sold on Wal-Mart, Target web sites. Film at 11!Five things about children's book awards from a Michigan point of view."Digital textbooks can save college students hundreds of dollars every semester, but the market is off to an unimpressive start."A charming remembrance of Ryszard Kapuscinski by writer Andrew Nagorski.
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