Recommended Reading: The Rumpus interviews John Grisham.
We Have So Little Time Anyway
Mantel Takes the Costa
Hilary Mantel added a Costa Book Award to her evermore decorated mantle following a unanimous vote in favor of her latest historical novel, Bring Up the Bodies.
Do I Know You?
No one is unique; we all share names, but what if you met everyone who had the same name as you? At The Morning News, Jennifer Berman reached out to her doppelgängers. “I’ve thought about writing her. But what would I say? I’m Jennifer Berman, too?”
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‘The Last Library’
A conference on the implications of Google’s proposed settlement with publishers will highlight the massive role Google’s scanning project will play in the future of books. “‘This is the last library.’ It’s going to be extremely difficult for anyone else to create a similar digital library in the future, at least under the current laws.”
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Jennifer Egan Interviews
Jacob Weisberg is hosting a series of interviews called “Conversations With Slate.” The first interviewee is A Visit from the Goon Squad author Jennifer Egan. You can catch the first two parts here and here; part three will be posted today.
Antiquarian Book Fair
This weekend is the last chance to visit the International Antiquarian Book Fair in Boston. Included are a collection of Bonnie and Clyde photos and an illustrated letter from Alexander Graham Bell to his parents describing problems with his phone invention.
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Party Crasher
Those of you with some knowledge of Pale Fire and Lolita won’t be surprised to learn what Nabokov thought of dinner parties. Namely, he thought they were awful, vaguely surreal events, held largely by drunkards with overriding appetites for drama. At The Paris Review Daily, Sadie Stein quotes a passage from “The Vane Sisters” to explain why “It’s hard to think of someone you’d want less at a midcentury faculty tea, save maybe a seething Shirley Jackson.” You could also read our own Garth Risk Hallberg on Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor.
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