“The suit is the most recent legal move in a years-long dispute between Burton and the broadcaster that originated the series.” New York Magazine‘s Vulture blog reports that LeVar Burton is being sued by WNED-TV in Buffalo, NY over the continued use of his famous Reading Rainbow tagline, “but you don’t have to take my word for it.”
You Can’t Take His Word for It
Sarah M. Broom’s New Orleans
In her debut memoir, The Yellow House, Sarah M. Broom writes vividly of her childhood in New Orleans East and charts the city's drastic changes over the decades.
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Malcolm Gladwell: Collected
The New York Times best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell recognizes that printed books can be beautiful, covetable objects that enhance the experience of reading. He hired Brian Rea, a frequent Times Magazine illustrator, and Paul Sahre, a designer who also frequently contributes to the magazine, to collaborate on the visuals for a new box set, Malcolm Gladwell: Collected.
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Nothing to Say
“The first section of the book inevitably ends up taking on a Rashomon-ic quality, as Sotatsu’s father, mother, brother and sister all get their say about what transpired during his time in prison, along with a prison guard who observed him. But [Jesse] Ball doesn’t let them fall into the he said-she said realm of one-note characters — these are fully fleshed-out people, whose thoughts, emotions and agendas are as real (and sometimes as contradictory) as your own.” On Silence Once Begun.
Tuesday New Release Day: Grossman, Baker, Dyer, Pierre, Wilson, Mukherjee, Grossman
In a big week for new releases, we have Lev Grossman’s The Magician King, the sequel to his blockbuster debut The Magicians; Nicholson Baker’s House of Holes, reviewed here today; another new Geoff Dyer book, The Missing of the Somme; DBC Pierre’s Lights Out in Wonderland; and Kevin Wilson’s debut novel The Family Fang (which one blurber calls The Royal Tenenbaums meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). Four of the five books above, incidentally, were featured in our big second-half preview. And out in a paperback this week are a pair of award winners: Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies and David Grossman’s To the End of the Land.
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Interview interviews, Vacationers vacation, etc., etc.
Interview, well, interviews Emma Straub on beach reads, vacation, and The Vacationers. Bonus: Elizabeth von Arnim‘s The Enchanted April is mentioned, and if you haven’t already read the book or seen the movie, please do so immediately.
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Comparing a Fajita to a Summer’s Day
I’ve written before about the excellently titled series Novelists in Restaurants Eating Food. It lets some of our foremost literary minds reflect on places like Fallon and Byrne and Buffalo Wild Wings. Now, Millions contributor Laura van den Berg writes about Cafe Azteca in Lawrence, MA, where they make shrimp fajitas that inspire mouth-watering daydreams. Sample quote: “Love of food can be love’s most sincere form—especially when avocados are involved.”
Lydia Takes the Bronze!
Congratulations to our own Lydia Kiesling whose essay “Proust’s Arabesk: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk” has taken third place in the 3 Quarks Daily 2010 Prize in Arts & Literature as judged by Robert Pinsky.