It’s a brand new week and Football Book Club is reading Ray Russell’s The Case Against Satan. For those of you scoring at home, that’s an exorcism novel written by a former executive editor of Playboy. Plus posts about Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction and Carmen Giménez Smith’s Milk and Filth.
Football Book Club: ‘The Case Against Satan’
Janeites Unite
“‘This is a place where people can let their Jane Austen freak flag fly.'” Last weekend, the Jane Austen Society of North America held their annual meeting in New York, attracting fans from all over the country, including Cornel West and Anna Quindlen.
Dear Diary
This week in Bookends: in which Thomas Mallon and Pankaj Mishra muse on which writer’s journals are really worth reading. Here’s a bonus Millions piece on Bookends for all those New York Times devotees.
New Vampire Weekend
According to Chris Richards at the Washington Post, the Ivy League rockers of Vampire Weekend are the unapologetic Bright Young Things of our recession era. Drinking Darjeeling on Daddy’s yacht never looked so good, he says, and their second album, Contra, out yesterday, sounds pretty good too.
“The zeitgeist of OWS is print.”
Rachel Hurn, our other Curiosities blogger, has written a round-up of the recent Verso Books / n+1 Occupy! launch party.
NaNoNoMore
For all my fellow NaNoWriMo failures, here’s how not to write a novel, romance or otherwise.
Tracy Morgan’s Brother From Another Mother
Next Up: The Norton Anthology of Infographics
Now that they’ve announced the impending publication of The Best American Infographics, it might be prudent to revisit Reif Larsen’s classic Millions article, “This Chart Is a Lonely Hunter: The Narrative Eros of the Infographic.”
More YA for Grownups
The Atlantic is kicking off its new series, YA for Grown Ups, with an examination of “The Greatest Girl Characters in Young Adult Literature.” Obviously The Hunger Games‘s Katniss Everdeen is up there, but don’t worry, Ramona Quimby makes the list too.