“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
Not the First Ebenezer
Our own Kevin Hartnett has an interesting theory as to how Charles Dickens came up with the idea for A Christmas Carol. At The Boston Globe, he looks at the evidence that Dickens got inspiration from the amateur writings of millworkers in Massachusetts.
●
●
Your Thoughts on Painters?
“Writers are not often great lovers but pathological inventors of explanations. Sex induces a kind of cowardice in them, a fear of experimentation, of being vulnerable, of stepping naked onto the stage to examine all the presumptions that pass without question when everyone still has their pants on.” Michael Thomsen makes the case that dating writers is a bad idea.
●
●
The 100 Most-Read Novels at the Library
OCLC, a leading library research organization, has released a list of the 100 most widely read novels from more than 18,000 libraries worldwide.
●
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day: Millhauser, Matar, Shakar, Fuller, Chez Panisse
Steven Millhauser’s new collection We Others is out this week, as are Hisham Matar’s Anatomy of a Disappearance and Alex Shakar’s Luminarium. Here at The Millions, Shakar recently offered the harrowing story of the publication of his first novel. Alexandra Fuller has a new memoir out. Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness. and foodies are celebrating with 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering.
●
●
Scribblenauts
In a digital age, what’s the point of handwriting? It may seem like there isn’t much point to honing one’s penmanship these days. In Hazlitt, Navneet Alang suggests that handwriting, far from being a lost art, is in fact a “useful alchemy” that retains particular uses. You could also read our own Kevin Hartnett on writing by hand.
The Book Depository Map
For book voyeurs, the Book Depository has a live, real-time map of people actually buying books from them across the world. (via Guardian’s Book Blog)
●
●
Polish Book Covers
An eerie collection of Polish book cover art from the 1970s and 80s.
●
●