Designboom has your library porn for the day. Pair with Daniel Penev‘s appreciation of public libraries the world ’round.
Do Not Lick the Books
Wimmer on Translation
Natasha Wimmer, translator of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and Álvaro Enrigue’s Sudden Death, explains her work process and why she’s translating a woman’s work next. Pair with our founder C. Max Magee’s thoughts on machine translation.
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Wifely Pursuits
Tolstoy has a new book out. No, not that Tolstoy — Sofiya Tolstoy, wife of Leo Nikolayevich. Her long-lost novella, which languished for years in the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow, has finally been published, as part of an expanded edition of her husband’s The Kreutzer Sonata. At Slate, Ron Rosenbaum praises her story, calling it “graceful, emotionally intuitive and heartbreaking.” Related: 8 experts on whether Leo Tolstoy is better than Dostoevsky.
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E-Etymology
“Check it out for yourself to marvel at the the long history of our language, including but not limited to the origins of the term ‘rock snot.’” The AV Club reports that the word nerds at Merriam-Webster have launched Time Traveler, a new tool that lets users look at the timing around when new words entered the print lexicon. Consider, also, authority and American usage.
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Brickjest
Infinite Jest may have “really taken on a foothold as the ‘novel of ideas’ of the late 20th and early 21st centuries” but now it’s also a “novel of legos,” courtesy of Kevin Griffith and his 11 year old son, Sebastian.
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He Said, He Said (Tom Wolfe Edition)
Thomas Mallon seemed to enjoy Tom Wolfe’s new novel. Our own Nick Moran? Not so much.
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Prime Minister, Poet
A rare manuscript dealer has put up for auction a 10 stanza poem written (in crayon!) by Winston Churchill. The poem, entitled “Our Modern Watchwords,” is believed to be the only known poem written by the British prime minister in his adulthood.
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