George Bernard Shaw had a strange relationship with Nietzsche. Alternately envious and dismissive of the German philosopher, Shaw once said he wanted to be an intellectual in Nietzsche’s mold, though he also felt Nietzsche’s thinking was addled and self-absorbed. In an essay for The New Statesman, Michael Holroyd tries to make sense of Shaw’s views.
Uber Nichts
Taking Bets on the Nobel Prize
Popular bookmakers Ladbrokes have announced their opening odds for the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Smart money seems to favor Haruki Murakami, who would surely take the prize if it depended on recent book sales. Meanwhile the next two favorites are Joyce Carol Oates (6/1) and Hungarian author Péter Nádas (7/1). All signs point to this being another year of disappointment for Philip Roth’s fans – his odds of winning stand at 16/1.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Sekaran; Lopate; Coover; Schweblin; Peelle; D’Agostino; Zhang; Doctorow
Out this week: Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran; A Mother’s Tale by Phillip Lopate; Huck Out West by Robert Coover; Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin; The Midnight Cool by Lydia Peelle; The Antiques by Kris D’Agostino; Lotus by Lijia Zhang; and Collected Stories by E.L. Doctorow. For more on these and other new titles, go read our latest book preview.
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The Bookless Library
Administrators at Cushing Academy in Massachusetts “have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks – the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.” (Thanks to Millions reader Laurie who asks, “So what happens when the power goes out?”)
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“Has anyone else tried pouring this stuff over dry cereal? A-W-E-S-O-M-E!”
Amazon collected some of the funniest, top-voted reviews from customers on its website. “Occasionally customer creativity goes off the charts in the best possible way,” they said. Of course, there are also plenty of examples of customers going off the charts in the worst possible ways, too.
Flying Aces
What happens when two magazine writers publish stories on the same topic within a month of each other? We get to read some of the best long-form journalism of the year. Both Esquire’s Chris Jones and The Washingtonian’s Garrett M. Graff wrote about what it was like to be on Air Force One after the Kennedy assassination. Jones’ “The Flight From Dallas” hits 7,600 words, but Graff’s “Angel is Airborne” totals 18,000. Save some time to read both because they’re equally gripping and uniquely told narratives.
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Saddle Club
Without the influence of Black Beauty, current opinions of horses and preadolescent girls’ reading lists might have looked very different.
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