La Petite Zine + Annalemma Magazine are having their release parties together at Bruar Falls on Sunday. The very awesome Greenlight Bookstore turns 2 today (Saturday). Go there, spend a hundred bucks, and they will give you a free tote bag. At PANK: The Queer issue is out. At Galley Cat: Upcoming J.D. Salinger biography coming very soon. At Time: An interview with Man Booker winner Howard Jacobson. At Boing Boing: “Great Expectations, the Miss Havisham Cake,” banned.
Weekend Bites: Jami Attenberg in Tijuana, Discussing Reality Hunger, Hating on the Classics, Marc Ribot, and More
Jami Attenberg shares the piece she wrote for The Greatest Three-Minute Rock ‘n’ Roll Story Ever event that we produced with our pals at Gigantic Magazine in Feb. At HTMLGIANT, Blake Butler and Matthew Simmons discuss Reality Hunger. The Rumpus book club sounds like a great idea. Who was Charles Dickens? Great title: “Wonk by Day, Poet by Night“. Hating on the classics. Marc Ribot discusses scoring The Kid.
Dickens was a Dark Dude
That’s what Christopher Hitchens says in this essay over at The Atlantic.
The Best Adaptation of A Christmas Carol?
Bites: The Dantean inferno of Brooklyn, Dickens Christmas Bummer, Granta Picks, Todd P in Mexico, Best Metal, and More
I loved this Gawker quote about the “ironic trailer park” they are building in Bushwick: “Every year they add a new level to the Dantean inferno that is artistic living in Brooklyn.” Lit. “What a wonderful thing it is, that such a great success should occasion me such intolerable anxiety and disappointment!” Charles Dickens on A Christmas Carol. The Guardian discusses why the book didn’t give the writer a surplus of holiday cash. Taschen will bring you back to the […]
Bites: New American Stories, New Nabokov is “Not a Novel”, Literary Journals as News Sources, Air Waves at Daytrotter, and More
Maud Newton talked about it in early November, but this recently posted review on Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigration (Library of America), had a quote I liked. Gary Shteyngart falls in love with cereal for the “unprecedented miracle” of toy prizes: “It tastes the way America feels. . . . . Something for nothing.” Lit. “The first thing you need to know about this new Nabokov thing is that it is not a novel.” — Ward Six. “In an ongoing effort to […]
Bites: Best Book Covers, “Bush-League Method acting,” Social Thuggery, and More
Enough with the literary-merit top 10 lists. Here are the best book covers of 2009. I personally love the look of Ruben Toledo’s designs, but not at all for the books they represent. An awkward confluence of visionary tones. Who imagines their literary heroines with such artistic flair? It’s unsettling. Lit. & Academia City University of New York dean Ann Kirschner recently read Little Dorrit four different ways (paperback, Kindle, iPhone, audiobook). This week, she talks about it on NPR. […]
Bites: Dickens as the modern dad, Ivy Pochoda to make publishing history, Tao Lin saves, and more
Lit. Could Dickens be a role model for the parents of today, or was it that he just had O.C.D.? Ivy Pochoda is the featured reader at our upcoming Vol. 1 Brooklyn Storytelling series. With her new book The Art of Disappearing (St. Martins Press) out tomorrow, which coincidentally is the same day that Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol hits stands, Ivy says that together, the two of them combined will make publishing history. This points to a good sign […]