“Creativity is back in the house in the second half of the month, so quit your grumbling and get back to work.” These writer horoscopes for the month of March will have you crushing through writers block and haggling over your contracts in no time.
Mercury in Retrograde
The Lovely Bones
Peter Jackson, beloved director of The Lord of the Rings movies, has turned his talents to an adaption of a very different book. He has directed a film version of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones (see the trailer here), the story of a young girl who is murdered and looks down on her family and killer from heaven. Saoirse Ronan will play Susie Salmon, the novel's heroine. Ronan is perhaps making a career of cinematic adaptions of novels--she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Briony Tallis in last year's film version of Ian McEwan's Atonement. Susan Sarandon, Rachel Weisz, and Stanley Tucci also star.
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The Banal, Unexceptional Recovering
"So much of recovery is a fight against exceptionalism—that necessary act of saying, What I’ve lived has been lived before, will be lived again, is nothing special but still holds meaning, still holds truth." Chris Kraus interviews Leslie Jamison about recovery, memoir, and her forthcoming title, The Recovering, for The Paris Review. Pair with: our interview with Jamison.
Beautifying Books
As e-books gain market share, publishers are gussying up book designs. Free Press vice president and publisher Martha K. Levin says, “the message [is] that even if you’re buying 90 percent of your books on your e-reader, this is the one that you want to have on your bookshelf.” The article highlights 1Q84 as an example of a successfully well-designed physical object, but if you haven't seen a copy, check out Chip Kidd's discussion of his work on the book.
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Hardcover Beauties
Penguin is putting out snazzy, mesmerizing, jacket-less hardcover editions of a number of classics. These remind of the old books on my parents' shelves. You won't be able to get your hands on these for a few months though.
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RIP Elmore Leonard
RIP Elmore Leonard, who passed away this morning at his home in Michigan at the age of 87. Our own Bill Morris got to the heart of what made Leonard a special writer in his 2010 piece about the prolific crime novelist.
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