Happy Birthday to Lord Byron, who was born on this day in 1788. Read some of his poems aloud or check out illustrations of “Don Juan” at Brain Pickings to celebrate his life’s works.
Happy Birthday, Lord Byron
Scrappy Little Nobody
Anna Kendrick (Into the Woods, Pitch Perfect) is releasing a collection of essays, Scrappy Little Nobody, this November. If it’s anything like her Twitter, I’m sure we’ll be laughing. For fans of Kendrick, check out our own Sonya Chung’s review of Up in the Air.
●
●
Contested Accounts
After reading through two new biographies of Sylvia Plath -- American Isis and Mad Girl’s Love Song -- Terry Castle concludes that “nothing about her life or legacy seems wholesome or resolved.” (Related: our own Hannah Gersen talking with Pain, Parties, Work author Elizabeth Winder.)
●
●
Meet Miss Simone
Meet Eunice Waymon, who Nina Simone was before she became Nina Simone. John Lahr reviews What Happened, Miss Simone? by Alan Light. Pair with Bill Morris’s piece on the Hollywood biopic.
DeLillo Reads in Brooklyn
Speaking of Point Omega, here's Vanity Fair's write-up of a rare DeLillo bookstore appearance, complete with conspiracy theorists and a fainting fangirl. It was sort of like a visit to the World's Most Photographed Barn.
An Evening With The Millions
This Sunday, come out to the KGB Bar and meet The Millions! A pile of staffers including C. Max Magee, Garth Risk Hallberg, Emily St. John Mandel, Sonya Chung, and yours truly will be there, and a good number of them will be reading their work. The event even ends by nine, so you can rush home to see Mad Men.
●
●
“Characters are Ciphers”
Peter Mendelsund writes for the Paris Review about how we see, or think we see, fictional characters. "Characters are ciphers. ... We are ever reviewing and reconsidering our mental portraits of characters in novels: amending them, backtracking to check on them, updating them when new information arises."