At the L.A. Times, take an interactive tour of Octavia Butler’s Los Angeles—in particular, discover the public libraries that the award-winning sci-fi writer referred to as her second home. “Butler was a voracious reader, checking out any title that remotely piqued her interest. ‘I taste books, taste knowledge and for that matter, taste life experiences as some people taste wine or food.’” Butler wrote her first novel, Patternmaster, at Los Angeles Public Library’s Central branch, where she also volunteered as a tutor. “When asked her reason for applying, she wrote, ‘I want to help.’” The online map features photographs of the Parable of the Sower and Kindred author’s library call slips, writing notebooks, personal journals and more.
Take a Tour of Octavia Butler’s Favorite Libraries
Zadie Smith on Charity
“But money is not neutral; it changes everything, including the ability to neutrally judge what people will or will not do for it.” Zadie Smith has a short essay in the New Yorker on the trials of lending money to a friend.
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The Humanity
I’ve written before about the ouroboric development of book reviewers reviewing book reviews. In The Spectator, Sam Leith uses a new book by David Lodge as a reason to ask: where will it all end?
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Wes Being Wes
From the looks of the promotional poster and the theatrical trailer, Wes Anderson may have “out-Wes Anderson’d” himself with his new film, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Let There Be
“LET THERE BE stress. Let the body respond to stress as it does to injury and infection. Let stress be a vulture that pecks at the mind and devours the body. This will make people less likely to be stressed. When they see stress wreak wrath upon the body, they will surely calm down a lot.” It seems the big problem with intelligent design is that it had a pretty sub-par peer review.
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Balance of Power: Grossman and Beha, Reader and Writer
Lev Grossman‘s article in the Wall Street Journal, “Good Books Don’t Have to Be Hard,” drew an interesting collection of comments, as well as a considered response from Christopher Beha at n+1.
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Profit-Sharing for Authors and Publishers
Novelist and blogger M.J. Rose thinks authors’ personal marketing efforts should be more substantially rewarded; Robert Miller, president and publisher of HarperStudio, responds with a proposal to restructure the author-publisher relationship into 50-50 profit-sharing, as HarperStudio has done.
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