“You are what you brought from your country? Or you are what you learned here?” The New York Times visits Librería Barco de Papel, one of New York City’s last remaining Spanish-language bookstores. The space also operates as a community and cultural center for the Jackson Heights neighborhood, where roughly half of the 67,000 residents identify as Latino. If you want to feel some more feelings about the state of independent bookstores, check out this old Millions piece about paving paradise and putting up a Chipotle.
Leemos En Español
What Would Jane Read?
Thanks to the Burney Centre at McGill University in Montreal, readers can now browse a virtual version of Jane Austen's library.
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Essential Differences
“To the list of differences between men and women, we can add one more: the drug-dose gender gap. Doctors and researchers increasingly understand that there can be striking variations in the way men and women respond to drugs, many of which are tested almost exclusively on males.” On the strikingly persistent gender gap in pain.
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Noted News Items
Paul Auster is still getting mileage out of a short story that appeared in the New York Times on Christmas day 1990. “Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” was subsequently released as a limited edition book illustrated by Brian Cronin. The story became the inspiration for the films Smoke and Blue in the Face. Now, Henry Holt is releasing another edition of the story. This time the book is illustrated by an Argentinean artist named, cryptically, ISOL. Here’s the story if you want to read it.The London Review of Books is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and to mark the occasion, the Guardian sits down with LRB editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers.The CS Monitor continues to provide its capsule reviews of the National Book Award nominees. Here are the reviews for the young adult category.
In The Kitchen
What’s cooking? Just an interview with the author who’s ghostwritten seemingly every bestselling cookbook out there.
Fifty Shades of Scandal
What’s the translation of “ooh la la”? Looks like Fifty Shades of Grey has become a contraband hit in China.
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Novelist of ideas
Millions contributor Charles Finch writes about Norman Rush, author of Mortals and Mating, “There is the constant possibility that the next sentence is about to tell us something new.” Pair with our own review.
Room Service With Proust
You might never be able to finish Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, but you can stay in his hotel. France is marketing its literary heritage with hotels named after famous authors. At the aforementioned Marcel, guests can stay in rooms named after Proust characters. If you aren’t a fan of madeleines, you can check into the R Kipling or Le Pavillon des Lettres.
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