“Love / is the only fortress / strong enough to trust to.” Mary-Kay Wilmers for the London Review of Books reviews Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore. In the book, Moore’s slightly-bizarre domestic life is examined with fairness and honesty alongside her impressive body of work. If poetry is your thing, check out our On Poetry column for more.
The Deepest Feeling
Coming Soon: Beautiful Ruins
Todd Field, who directed In the Bedroom and Little Children, is going to bring Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins to the big screen. The book was a big favorite among this year’s Year In Reading contributors.
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Nicholson Baker and Friendly’s
Nicholson Baker talks about why he does so much writing at Friendly’s, a fast food chain that soon may exist only in its descriptions.
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Place Your Bets
This year’s Nobel in literature will be announced in early October, so there’s still plenty of time to get in on the gambling! Currently leading in all the over/unders? Haruki Murakami, whose book covers we considered here.
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My Ears! My Ears!
In a move that could scar you for life, Gilbert Gottfried reads selected passages (Very NSFW!) from E L James’ breakout book Fifty Shades of Grey.
Money, not ethics, ultimately motivates censorship
Ariel Bogle has a good round up over on Moby Lives about Paypal, Amazon, Apple, and censorship in publishing.
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Felt Succeeds Where Words Fail
Spike Jonze and Olympia Le-Tan collaborate on a short, creepy, bookish sex romp, animated in felt and set in Shakespeare and Company. Via The Dish.
Translating the Untranslatable
Recommended Reading: In which a great translator takes on a nearly impossible project: “Schmidt violates the rules of orthography and punctuation throughout the book, and its sprawling conversations cover James Joyce, trees, magic, the moon, and Xerxes, among many other things. After getting Zettel’s Traum out of his system, Schmidt would go on to write his best works. ‘I had to write it,’ he said. ‘And such a book had to be written sometime.'”
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