Recommended Reading: Ben Parker constructs a short history of hardcore music in his review of Tony Rettman’s NYHC: New York Hardcore 1980-1990 in n+1. Also, music for book lovers.
Hardcore Book Lovers
For Whom The Bell Tolls
A personalized memento mori: Learn the year, day, and month of your demise by filling out the short survey at The Death Clock, “the internet’s friendly reminder that life is slipping away.”
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Type Setting
In a clip The Atlantic calls “technology porn for book lovers,” you can see how manuscripts became books in the 1940s.
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Night Shade Books Gets Shady
A publishing flap in three parts, with colons. 1: Publisher’s Weekly details unsettling allegations about Night Shade Books — an unwillingness to answer calls from writers or their agents, stolen digital rights, and missing royalty statements. 2: Night Shade issues an apology. 3: A wronged writer responds.
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Some Good Stuff
Two great scoops were passed my way by the intrepid Brian, fresh from his European sojourn. The first is this so-wierd-it-has-to-be-true story about Newt Gingrich being an extremely prolific and friendly Amazon.com customer reviewer. Click here for the must-read gory details.While in Spain, Brian read Robert Hughes’ new book Barcelona: The Great Enchantress from the National Geographic Directions series and noticed on the back cover that Jon Lee Anderson, the New Yorker’s Baghdad correspondent extraordinaire, has a book for the series coming out. It will be about Andalucia. This will be a busy year for Anderson. In the fall, his fantastic Baghdad pieces will be collected in The Fall Of Baghdad and he will also release Guerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World, which ought to be quite good.
Asymptote’s Third Birthday
Celebrate literary journal Asymptote’s third anniversary in New York City later this month. The event will feature Eliot Weinberger, Jeffrey Yang (translator of Liu Xiaobo), Paris Review poetry editor Robyn Creswell, Idra Novey (translator of Clarice Lispector), and Daniella Gitlin (translator of Rodolfo Walsh). They will come together for a panel discussion on translation and readings. The event starts at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, January 21 at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe.
The Philosopher Queen
At Slate, Jillian Goodman asks, where are all the female cultural critics?
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Skip the Coffee
Do you need a pot of coffee before you dive into writing every day? You’re just procrastinating and making yourself less creative. Writer Merrill Markoe did the same thing until she discovered that working right after she wakes up leads to the best creative writing. “Words come pouring out easily while my head still feels as if it is full of ground fog, wrapped in flannel and gauze, and surrounded by a hive of humming, velvety sleep bees.”
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