“So, each year, I can’t help but ask: Is there a political point to be made for calling non-book related detritus, tchotchkes, sparkly twinkly things, sidelines instead of gifts, as many of my esteemed colleagues insist on calling all things?” When it comes to the pressures of running an independent bookstore during the holidays, Lucy Kogler at The Literary Hub gets it very right. Our own Janet Potter has waxed poetic about bookstores, as well.
The Holiday Bookstore Boogie
The Poet Carried No Revolvers
Recommended Viewing: Go and check out the delightfully illustrated comic "Amiri Baraka Is in Contempt" by Nathan Gelgud at The Paris Review.
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52 Years Since Lolita
52 years since Lolita: The Reader’s Almanac recounts the many publishers who turned down Nabokov’s masterpiece in 1953. From one rejection letter: “I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.” (via @ElectricLit)
Please, Please, Please, Let Charles Dickens Get What He Wants
Charles Dickens becomes an honorary member of The Smiths in BBC’s Horrible Histories music video. My favorite lyric: “Whilst writing Edwin Drood, a train crash didn’t help my mood.”
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Bill Keller wants reporters to report and only report.
The New York Times' executive editor Bill Keller caused an uproar three months ago when he railed against Twitter and, specifically, how it was making us all dumb. (Or, after being challenged, was it for some other reason?) This month, he rails against his staff of reporters because they want to write books.
Sincerely, John Updike
"James Schiff, an associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, is working on a volume of Updike’s letters and has unearthed thousands of letters, postcards, and notes the author sent to complete strangers who wrote to him." The Guardian writes about an in-progress book of John Updike's letters that reveals how often the writer corresponded with not only his contemporaries, like John Barth and Joyce Carol Oates, but his readers as well. See also: an essay about the personal and literary relationship between Barth and Updike.