By: Minh,
on 5/7/2013
With Gatsby finally about to hit theaters, I couldn't resist putting together another mash-up. CLICK HERE for the full post at Book Riot.
By: Minh,
on 5/5/2013
Great list here from all the BookRiot contributors. My choice for the month was:
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
There’s a great passage early on in Giovanni’s Room that’s incidental to the plot, but provides key insight into the main character, David. He’s describing a car crash in which he was the drunk driver, but he tells his story completely in the passive voice: “something weird happened to all my reactions”, “the car sprang suddenly out of my control”, and finally “a telephone pole, foam white, came crying at me out of the pitch darkness”. Through this narrative alchemy, David manages to separate himself from the responsibility for his actions. He didn’t so much cause the accident as the accident happened to him. As the story unfolds, you see David repeatedly rely on this self-preservation tactic. He may feign self-loathing as he wreaks havoc on the lives of those around him, but whether he is steering friends into a tree or driving his lover toward tragedy, in his mind David is never truly at fault—he is merely the victim of circumstance.
By: Minh,
on 4/24/2013
My request to the universe: Louis CK reading Catcher in the Rye. Please? Somebody?
[CLICK HERE for full post at Book Riot]
By: Minh,
on 4/21/2013
Two of the year’s most highly anticipated events are the The Great Gatsby movie and the return of Arrested Development. To fill the void until their release dates, let’s see what happens when the Great American Novel meets the Great American Family.
Click here for the full piece at BookRiot, but for a taste, here are a few one of my favorites:
By: Minh,
on 4/16/2013
“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”
J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
By: Minh,
on 4/7/2013
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| (Lorrie Moore, image via The Nation) |
"Writing is a safari, dammit," exclaimed the teacher. "It means going out there and spotting, nabbing, and bringing home to the cage of the page the most marvelous living stuff of the world."
Timothy Robinson sat right in front of the teacher. He was doodling scenes from Conan in the margins of his notebook.
"But those cages are small and expensive," the teacher continued, searched, groped, not knowing quite what she was talking about.
Conan's pectorals were like concrete slabs and in Timothy Robinson's margins Conan's biceps and triceps had begun to make his arms look like large croissants. Now he suddenly was getting sunglasses. Now striped thighs.
"Don't bring back any dim-witted mooses," she said. "Don't put a superfluous dumb cluck of a line in your poem." She had used her lifeboat simile in the last class: A line is like a lifeboat--only a limited number of words get to go in it and you have to decide which word-lives are most valuable; the rest die.
It was ridiculous, but the only thing she could think of to say.
When no one said anything in response, she stared out into the center of the room and said, "So, Tim. How the f--k is Conan?"
By: Minh,
on 4/6/2013
It's that time of year again when I find myself brooding over the smoking wreckage that is my NCAA tournament bracket, wondering where it all went wrong.
And inevitably, there's someone out there who filled out their bracket based on some random criteria (uniform color, mascot fierceness, campus with the best food courts french fries), and I can only watch in horror as they dance their way to victory.
So as we head into the Final Four, I'm taking this time to reevaluate the field based on an equally random factor: the literary connections of the remaining schools.
Maybe this will provide clarity in the face of the madness — and perhaps next time I'll head to the library instead of the sports page before making my picks. I definitely can't fare any worse than I did this year.[Click here for full text]
By: Minh,
on 4/2/2013
Through the magic of Instagram, the average person with a cellphone camera can take a normal picture and add depth, grit, and even a sense of made-to-order nostalgia. Now imagine an app that would let you apply this same capability to literature. Something that would allow you to–with just a few swipes on your smartphone–take a pedestrian piece of prose and instantly transform it into something more memorable.
For example, let’s take “The Hunger Games.” Its popularity is unquestioned, but it was not particularly renowned for the complexity or beauty of its language. What if we could take a passage from this book and apply some preset filters to approximate a more classic style?
By: Minh,
on 4/2/2013
Book Riot asked contributors to choose the best book we read this month. My choice was A. M. Homes' "The Safety of Objects", but you should go check out the full post--lots of good stuff there.
[Click here for full post]
By: Minh,
on 3/27/2013
This is awesome and somewhat totally mindblowing. Via Brain Pickings:
"Sylvia Plath — celebrated poet, little-known artist, lover of the world, repressed “addict of experience”, steamy romancer … and children’s book author? Given my soft spot for lesser-known vintage children’s books by famous literary icons, I was delighted to discover The It-Doesn’t-Matter Suit (public library) — a charming children’s story Plath penned shortly before having her first child. Though her journals indicate it was written on or immediately before September 26, 1959, it wasn’t until March of 1996 that the tale saw light of day with its first — and only — publication, featuring wonderful illustrations by German graphic designer and artist Rotraut Susanne Berner."
By: Minh,
on 3/21/2013
This is my kind of bouncer.
By: Minh,
on 3/19/2013
Whether it’s the overlapping narratives of Cloud Atlas, the intricate puzzle of a Calvino novella, or the cheap thrills of The Matrix, I am a sucker for mind-bending entertainment—particularly stories from that curious subset called metafiction.
Describe a book as labyrinthine and I’m a goner. Tell me that a story resembles Russian nesting dolls and I’m putty in your hands. Break down the fourth wall and I’ll be on the other side waiting for you with open arms and a cup of coffee.
By: Minh,
on 3/19/2013
By: Minh,
on 3/9/2013
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By: Minh,
on 3/7/2013
By: Minh,
on 2/27/2013
they announced that someone left a belt behind at airport security and it was me so I went back and had to show them I wasn't wearing a belt
— jon klassen (@burstofbeaden) February 28, 2013
By: Minh,
on 2/24/2013
In Stephen Greenblatt's Pulitzer Prize winning "The Swerve", he goes into fascinating detail about the value of books, particularly prior to the advent of the printing press. In one passage, he describes how monasteries would sometimes protect these precious items by placing curses on them.
Reading one of these I couldn't help but think there might be some librarians who would be tempted to put this to use. So, in case the 10 cent daily fine isn't doing the trick, I've made the curse into a handy sign:
By: Minh,
on 2/12/2013
As someone who could spend (and has spent) hours looking at book design, I love The Millions' annual comparison of U.S. vs. U.K. book covers. Inspired by the post, here are the U.S. covers of some of the past Newbery Award winners and their alternate covers across the pond.
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| The U.S. version is both playful and mysterious. The U.K. version is a Brendan Fraser movie. Winner: U.S. |
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| The U.K. version is more stylish and less blatantly angtsy. Winner: U.K. |
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| Wasn't a big fan of either... and then I noticed the silhouette on the U.S. version. Winner: U.S. |
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| Both get the job done, but the U.S. version has more charm. Winner: U.S. |
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| Eh, both kind of look like album covers for discarded Pink Floyd albums. Winner: None |
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| The U.S. version is a bit cartoonish, but at least it doesn't make me want to cry. Winner: Daisy from Downton Abbey |
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| Full disclosure: I grew up subconsiously thinking the bearded old man was Lois Lowry. Winner: U.S. |
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| The U.S. version focuses on "plain", the U.K. focuses on "tall". Winner: U.S. (This one is a pure nostalgia choice. Sorry, U.K.) |
By: Minh,
on 1/25/2013
By: Minh,
on 1/29/2013
By: Minh,
on 1/31/2013
By: Minh,
on 2/4/2013
As editor in chief of Beginner Books at Random House in the late 1960s, Michael Frith worked closely with Geisel, sometimes into the early hours of the morning. When they were stumped by a word choice, Mr. Frith said, Geisel would often bound to the closet and grab a hat for each of them — a sombrero, or perhaps a fez. There they would be, sitting on the floor, Mr. Frith remembered, “two grown men in stupid hats trying to come up with the right word for a book that had only 50 words in it at most.”
By: Minh,
on 2/5/2013
By: Minh,
on 2/9/2013
In 1969, the great surrealist Salvador Dali published illustrations for Alice in Wonderland that were fantastic--if also slightly disturbing.
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| Advice from a Caterpillar |
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By: Minh,
on 2/11/2013
Plath also published the picture book, THE BED BOOK, illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully. It rhymes and it's actually a pretty good book in the tradition of Mary Ann Hoberman's A HOUSE IS A HOUSE FOR ME. It looks like Sir Quentin Blake illustrated a later UK edition of the book, too.