What does the Man Booker prize mean for independent presses? On Salt, Saraband, and Oneworld, the three indie publishers with books on the Man Booker longlist this year.
Little Big League
Not a Good Influence
Why should a college student major in English? It’s a question with hundreds of answers, but one of the most common is that reading, more so than other activities, makes you a better person. It sharpens your mind and hones your sense of morality. But what if this comforting idea -- as close as you can get to a conviction held by all writers -- has little to no basis in reality?
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Ancient Shade
Anyone who’s read The Divine Comedy knows that rivalries and petty grudges are timeless. To further prove the point, Mallory Ortberg provided this list, which details the cattiest lines from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Sample quote: “Why do unskilled and ignorant souls disturb him who has skill and knowledge?”
J.E. Fishman on The New York Times
On The Nervous Breakdown this week, J.E. Fishman considers the book review practices of The New York Times: "My view is very much eastern, very much old school, where a book review from the Times was the only sure sign that an author had arrived. But maybe it’s time to rethink that, and this rethinking has been long overdue."
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NYRB Classics Winter Sale
Have you taken advantage of NYRB Classics' Winter Sale yet? A whole bunch of their books are listed with 50% discounts! Why not check out The Radiance of the King, which was recommended this past Year in Reading by Deborah Eisenberg? (And also recommended by Junot Díaz back in our 2007 edition of the series, too.)
St. Crispin’s Day is Here Again
Today is St. Crispin’s Day, a day immortalized in Shakespeare’s Henry V when the title character rallied his British “band of brothers” to face their French adversaries. And according to Guy Patrick Cunningham, “there are lots of ways we can celebrate it.”
Thunder Thighs
Recommended Reading: This important essay from Gayle Branedis at The Rumpus on our cultural obsession with women’s thighs.
“The heat of autumn / is different from the heat of summer.”
With the help of Flora Coker, the Poetry Foundation created an animated reading of Jane Hirshfield’s “The Heat of Autumn.”
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