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Business Week focuses on the work of Larry Kirshbaum, the book-industry veteran hired last May to head Amazon Publishing; the Millions examines copyright and the future of intellectual property; Paris Review Daily reveals the odd and interwoven events surrounding the publication of Jack Green's Fire the Bastards!; and other news.
Good question! Watch as Richard from AbeBooks explains that the unique aroma comes from the reaction of a book's organic material to heat, light, moisture, and the chemicals used in its production. What's your favorite-smelling book?
"When it occurred to me I'd never read Wise Blood (Harcourt, Brace, 1952) by Flannery O'Connor, I felt I'd be missing something if I didn't. I'd read a book of her short stories and saw the movie Wise Blood long ago so perhaps I imagined I'd read it; though, I'd never knowingly substitute the movie for the book. As expected, it's an amazing read. A minor annoyance is wading through the dialect spellings she uses, but beyond that the book is a marvelous mix of clear writing and language with impenetrable yet vivid characters.
Deconstruct a short story that you find particularly powerful. First, identify the point-of-view and the characters. Then outline the plot. Finally, make a chart with two columns: In the first column, describe what happens in each paragraph of the story; in the second column, analyze why it happens, how it serves the larger story. Apply what you learn as you revise a story-in-the-works or begin a new one.
Executive director Tree Swenson will leave the the Academy of American Poets; Alexander Nazaryan explains why Vladimir Putin's recent literary proposal is an assault on freedom; author Luc Sante writes of his first encounter with the work of Patti Smith; and other news.
“Last year was a big year for me. I birthed a baby (my second) and a book (my first). Unfortunately, reading for pleasure was a casualty of all this creative activity. I found time to read exactly four books last year. One was a book about how to put your baby to sleep; another was Tamar Adler’s phenomenal paean to better living through simple-yet-righteous eating, An Everlasting Meal (Scribner, 2011).
From a series of ampersand images created by visual poet Gary Barwin.
The Center for Fiction is hosting a marathon reading of The House of Mirth on January 26th to celebrate the birthday of Edith Wharton; Academy Award nominations have been announced, with film adaptations of Katheryn Stockett's The Help and Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close contending for an Oscar; Condé Nast Traveler showcases the literary landmarks of Brooklyn, New York; and other news.
“I had to read Honoré de Balzac’s A Distinguished Provincial at Paris for a grad school lit class. I was expecting it to be boring or inaccessible because a lot of my other favorite books this year, and in general—Emma Donoghue's Room (Little, Brown, 2010); Melinda Moustakis' Bear Down, Bear North (University of Georgia Press, 2011); and Tayari Jone's Silver Sparrow (Algonquin Books, 2011)—don't use elevated language and are narrated in the first person by characters who have strange voices and skewed perspectives.
Compose a poem in the form and style of a postcard note. Keep the length brief, and give the recipient a sense of the place you’re visiting or the space you’re occupying. The location from which you write can be imagined or real. Alternatively, buy a postcard, and try to write a poem based on the image or photograph on the front of the postcard.
