Recommended Reading: Søren Kierkegaard and Anna Akhmatova overheard whispering on a stairwell.
Very Secret and Odd
Book-Related Internet Graphics
Today in book-related graphics: The Arts Shelf has created an infographic measuring famous literature by word count, and The New York Times provides a handy, illustrated guide to any writers’ retreat, complete with authors’ cloisters and an “emergency idea generator.”
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Booksellers React to Borders’ Bankruptcy
Half of all restaurants that open close,” WORD owner Christine Onorati says. On the other hand, Red Lemonade publisher Richard Nash hopes former Borders employees can find ways to continue “operating as the matchmakers of the book ecosystem.”
“The C closest to the center”
In the LA Times, Jim Ruland reviews Middle C, the new book by Year in Reading alumnus William H. Gass. For another take on the novel, go read “best-read man in America” Michael Dirda in the Washington Post, or else check out Greg Gerke on the author’s Life Sentences.
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Dispatch from Cuba
The May issue of Words Without Borders is now available online, featuring new speculative fiction from Cuba by Herson Tissert Pérez, Mylene Fernández Pintado, Ena Lucia Portela, and others.
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Speaking of The New Yorker…
Is just me, or has The New Yorker been resurgent the last few weeks? In addition to the David Grann piece mentioned below, we’ve gotten: Bloomberg, diving, James Wood‘s most cogent essay to date on atheism and belief, and a F-B-P triple play. (That’s Friend to Bilger to Paumgarten, for those keeping score at home.) And I read the fiction for five issues in a row – a personal best. I know they assemble these things far in advance, but it still feels like the Ian Frazier “Siberia” two-parter, eight years in the making, started some kind of conflagration of awesomeness. Thoughts?
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Lerner on Berger
Recommended Listening: Ben Lerner stops by The New Yorker’s fiction podcast to discuss “Woven, Sir,” a story by John Berger.
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Jenny Zhang on the Importance of Funny Writers
Jenny Zhang on "the hardest and most worthwhile thing to achieve in writing:" making people laugh.
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