“It is not, however, fashionable to love acknowledgments, and for good reason: Most of them are numbingly predictable in their architecture, little Levittowns of gratitude.” In her last piece for The New York Times as a daily book critic, Jennifer Senior writes about her unabashed love for acknowledgements in books. From our archives: Henriette Lazaridis‘s essay on the same topic.
I’d Like to Thank…
The 2017 Rooster
There's a new Tournament of Books winner in town, and it's also being adapted for the screen by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, so it truly does rain when it pours.
Interview With a Bookseller
“We have a customer who eats Bibles. She’s very nice, but she will walk up to a section, rip out a page, and eat it. She much prefers Catholic versions—she won’t touch King James Bibles.” This interview with the owner of Brattle Book Shop in Boston illustrates the peculiar idiosyncrasies of daily bookstore life. For all you romantics out there, here is a love letter to the brick-and-mortar bookstore.
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I Tweet Therefore I am
Twitter lets writers think in public, and it's changing the way we write, Thomas Beller argues in The New Yorker. “Does articulating a thought in public freeze it in place somehow, making it not part of a thought process but rather a tiny little finished sculpture? Is tweeting the same as publishing?"
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A Blurb of One’s Own
Full Stop will be celebrating five years in January as an online literary journal. To commemorate the anniversary, they're publishing their first-ever book, collecting the very best writing from their website and featuring blurbs by anyone who makes a donation to the magazine. Pair with this Millions piece on the art of blurb writing.
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Music for Thought
The moral conundrum that can be the white hip hop critic.
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Garcia Marquez Movie Protested
Production of a film based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores is being met with opposition from anti-prostitution groups in Mexico. HuffPo has the story. (Thanks Buzz)
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Kriegman Explains It All
This Splitsider interview with Clarissa Explains It All creator Mitchell Kriegman is fantastic. Among the many revelations that come out of the interview is this gem: "The most amazing person that you would never guess worked on the show was [The Hunger Games author] Suzanne Collins. She was the quietest, nicest person. Like having JK Rowling working on your show!"