Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose series will be adapted into a five-part Showtime series starring Benedict Cumberbatch. A few years back on our site, Ben Hamilton wrote, “the pleasures of reading Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose novels can feel strangely illicit.”
The Melrose Series
The Second Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Biographer Fiona Sampson reflects on the life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose forced isolation due to respiratory illness led her to find an escape through writing.
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Sustainable Olympics
Year in Reading alumna Nell Zink writes on the future of global sport. As she puts it, “Under my plan for reform, the Olympics will no longer be assigned a fixed geographic location.”
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The Housewife Novel
Recommended Reading: On the history of literature about housewives, from Madame Bovary to Dept. of Speculation.
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What’s That Type?
For all typography enthusiasts and lovers of browser plugins: Chrome has a new extension, FontFace Ninja, that will tell you the font of any text on any webpage.
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The Naipaul Test
V.S. Naipaul (seemingly a professional misogynist at times) rankled many by suggesting there are no women writers that can equal him and calling Jane Austen “sentimental.” Now the Guardian offers up a quiz that challenges readers to identify the gender of an author simply by reading a passage of his or her writing.