***Interesting Articles -- March/April

Welcome, meteorological spring and fall!

And welcome, links -- to articles, announcements, dust-ups, images, etc. that caught your attention.

DRM chair: http://vimeo.com/60475086

Stumbled across this website the other day. Like me, he's interested in book covers. I can't figure out if this is a joke, or what . . .



More at: http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.ca/2012/10/humiliating-henry-james.html

This site is just fun, although its connection to literature is tenuous at best:

http://thrilling-tales.webomator.com/derange-o-lab/pulp-o-mizer/pulp-o-mizer.htm...

The Morning News Tournament of Books has begun with a pre-tournament play-in comparing Fobbit by David Abrams with Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain and The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers.

http://www.themorningnews.org/tob/2013-pre-tournament-play-in.php

>5 RidgewayGirl:: Thanks for reminding me of that! I love the ToB, but I'd forgotten it was starting now.

Haven't read any of the contenders this year, but several of them are on my TBR Pile, so I'll be interested to see what the judges think of them.

I've only read two of them, but the essays that accompany each match-up will add to my TBR. I'm now reading a book from last year's list, The Marriage Plot.

Not an interesting article, but a 50% off sale on selected NYRB titles.

Used e-books anyone: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/03/09/coming-soon-a-market-for-used-e...

"Has Virago changed the publishing world's attitudes towards women?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/14/virago-changed-publishers-attitudes-...

Ngugi wa Thiong'o writes about the recent Kenyan election in a New York Times op ed article.

word of warning to aspiring writers - don't quit your day job!
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/hey_amazon_wheres_my_money/

How does this stuff even happen?!

http://flavorwire.com/378513/20-embarrassingly-bad-book-covers-for-classic-novel...

>13 avidmom:: Wow, some of those are impressively bad.

The cover for Cranford cannot possibly be real.

#13 - Those are so bad, they're actually fabulous. Except the Alice in Wonderland one, which I sort of seriously like.

Do you think they have a clue what these books are about????

>14 bragan: They are ALL really bad.

The Poke on Facebook led me to the Googly Eyes on Books web site.

Robert

For parents/relatives/babysitters who enjoy reading to kids: a few suggestions for back-and-forth read-alouds, where the reading alternates between parent and child.

>19 Mr.Durick: I only browsed through three pages but Life of Pi made me especially giggle.

William Shakespeare Was A Tax Dodger, Grain Hoarder: Study : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/31/william-shakespeare-tax-dodger_n_298913...

>21 dchaikin: Yes, I read that in our local paper as well. Seems kind of inconsequential to me... but Shakespeare does refer to grain-hoarding in the Porter scene of Macbeth.

An unusual library in Brooklyn from the New York Times.

On the New York Review of Books:

http://nymag.com/news/features/robert-silvers-2013-4/#

Robert

2013 Scripps Spelling Bee Rule Change: Kids Will Have To Know Definitions For Vocabulary Tests

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/09/spelling-bee-scripps-definitions-rule-c...

I wasn't quite sure where to put this one to share with you. A friend just shared a link to this site. I have been poking around this morning, and it looks interesting.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/about/

Edited to add second link.

23 - I want to go there. Don't know how long it will be there - doesn't sound like solid funding does it? Still, we can hope.

Deborah Copaken Kogan has in interesting defense of the Women's Prize for Fiction: http://www.thenation.com/article/173743/my-so-called-post-feminist-life-arts-and...

Interesting article AND comments. I find it all heartbreaking.

Here's your chance to help out the OED

http://public.oed.com/appeals/

Here's another WTF cover. I'd love to get a copy of this book and read the text. What does it mean? Is this a way of saying "hide your bad feelings whatever the cost," or does it mean "don't do drugs kids, because you won't feel anymore" ?? I can't believe A Little Golden Book has the word "destroy" in its title.

Well there's another hour on google I'll never get back! Sure was fun tho.

Looks like a photoshop job from this book.

Good catch Urusal. Now the change in font jumps out at me.

Looks like a photoshop job from this book.

Oh, that makes so much sense. Thank you! I thought "destroy" was a very unGolden book word, in any context! I wonder if the person who made that did so after reading the text? I'd still like to hear what the book has to say.

Yeah, I was hoping to find some sort of trail back to the original, or at least somewhere close, that would give me more info about what prompted it, but I didn't find anything.

Dan, Kogan's article was also linked to on Arts and Letters Daily. It would be dispiriting, not to mention unfair, to be treated that way.

Robert

The Voynich Manuscript and how to think, among other things:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/129131/cracking-the-voyni...

Robert

The best books, from a poll by Publishers Clearing House:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151625357950786&set=a.144927670785...

Robert

Oh my! My favorite vote was "Whethering Heights". What was your Robert?

I didn't read them all, but I especially like Le Petit Larousse Illustré (pick a year).

I predicted, before I opened the comments, that the Bible would prevail, and perhaps it should. But the triviality of most of the other entries astounded me, even aware as I am of the Tea Party.

Robert

I wonder how many of the people who said The Bible, (or in some cases "The Bible!!! Hearts!" ) have actually read it.

41 - excellent point! Not many I'd bet!

#38 this was very disturbing...given I only read 50 comments.

#38 I found it disturbing too, but there is a crowd mentality. I did love the person who said "Of course, the Bible . . . and then Gone with the Wind"! And the person who said, "For all of you who said the Bible, I love fiction too."

#38 - I don't know anything about Facebook, but I suspect there's another page or site for Christians where someone said Let's all go over to this page and vote for the Bible. It reminds me of the Modern Library poll for the greatest novel of the 20th century which was ballot-stuffed by Libertarians and Scientologists.

This is an article from The Atlantic. How Not To Die "The U.S. medical system was built to treat anything that might be treatable, at any stage of life—even near the end, when there is no hope of a cure, and when the patient, if fully informed, might prefer quality time and relative normalcy to all-out intervention."

In the past year, I have seen two of my cousins go through something similar to this before going to hospice care. I think their families may have wanted this approach.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/how-not-to-die/309277/

I'm pretty sure I've seen discussions on this topic in other threads. The quotes from Mr. Cassem in this NYT article on original vs. movie tie-in covers are gems:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/business/media/new-great-gatsby-book-carries-a...

I can't quite get over Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead in The Great Gatsby. I may be one of very few people who just can't see him in some of the roles he has been playing lately.

As for the article, “I think it would bring shame,” he said, “to anyone who was trying to read that book on the subway.” is just priceless.....

While I prefer to have books that don't have the movie poster as the front cover, I'm all for it. Anything that gets someone to pick up a book! I mean, we're not who they're designing covers for, really. We choose our books based on reviews and what the author's written and all sorts of things that rate more highly than the cover. If this gets someone to discover a book, then cover it in glitter and topless men.

Of course, I also think the illustrator of the Captain Underpants series should design covers for all the Newbery winners.

Anyone read any cli-fi?

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/20/176713022/so-hot-right-now-has-climate-change-crea...

>49 RidgewayGirl: Unfortunately a great many members here are hugely swayed by covers, so while I agree that *I* am not who they're designing covers for, I don't think the statement is true of the majority of even the book-loving population. Which makes me sad.

Just had to add this to the discussion on covers (from The Paris Review):

>52 wandering_star: ...I feel as if that artist has sat in on these meetings before! hah.

52 Very funny . . . in a way.

ETA It's MAY!