A roundup of things consumed by our contributors. Tobias Carroll “She was looking at a record called Anarchy in the U.K. by a group called the Sex Pistols. It was a very ugly cover, but I am quite interested in anarchism because of The Dispossessed.” That’s from Jo Walton’s Among Others, a novel set in 1979 about a young woman named Morwenna attending an English boarding school. She reads voraciously; she expounds at length on the science fiction and fantasy that she’s encountering, and this […]
Morning Bites: The Girl With The Wagner Tattoo, Talking Moby-Dick, coffee goes up, and more
The WQXR blog asks: “Is the Vanger family in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo based on the family of Richard Wagner and his descendants” after an LA Times article points out the similarities. Ray Bradbury, Tony Kushner, Laurie Anderson and Frank Stella talk Moby-Dick on a rerun of Studio 360’s “American Icons” series. What do Jami Attenberg and Wal-Mart have in common? New York Starbucks coffee to go up ten cents. D’Angelo covering Soundgarden is the sound of babies being […]
Morning Bites: Philip Roth’s nonexistent Nobel, Truffaut’s Bradbury, vampire Jews, and more
Winter is coming (well, the holiday shopping season is, but winter nonetheless), and it’s getting everybody really psyched about the impending Kindle Fire vs. iPad wars. Slate and The Daily Beast weigh in. At The Millions: Can we please just give Philip Roth a fricken Nobel Prize already? Until then, he’s just gonna keep chilling. Taking a look at Truffaut’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. This week will see the release of Arthur Conan Doyle’s long lost first novel, […]
Bites: Literary award kvetching, Bradbury paints, Obama is the big winner, Woods do Daytrotter, and more
Remember yesterday when I said more Jewish people will kvetch about Amos Oz or Philip Roth not getting the Nobel Prize for Literature? Tablet mentions the Tribe losing out, talks about Herta Mueller, and ties it all up with “Also intriguing: the Times notes that her father served in the SS during World War II.” Lit. Ray Bradbury was a regular Bob Ross. The Forward talks about Elie Wiesel’s “meandering, sometimes, narcissistic ruminations” on medieval French commentator of the Talmud […]
Bites: The kids got a new Catch-22, Ray Bradbury knows how to party, Malt Whitman, and more
Everybody has one of those books that you have always meant to read, but never seem to get around to, and mine is Catch-22. The Guardian asks what is “The New Generation’s Catch-22“, and now I’m wondering should I just give up on Joseph Heller’s novel, and check in on what ‘the kids’ are reading? There’s gonna be a Ray Bradbury birthday up in this mofo. (via Boing Boing) Amazon is getting sued by a 17-year-old because his copy of […]