David Mitchell on The King’s Speech
David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and three other fantastic novels has a piece in Prospect Magazine about Best Picture winner The King’s Speech. While the acclaimed film at best simplifies the historical record and at worst blatantly ignores it — Christopher Hitchens, like him or not, has […]
Things You Should Do RIGHT NOW: Support WFMU
The great New Jersey freeform radio station WFMU, which has neither corporate sponsorship nor government funding (i.e. NO CREEPS) is having its pledge drive right now. Tom Scharpling, the host of world’s strangest call-in show, The Best Show on WFMU, is one of the funniest people on the planet, and he’s put together his own […]
A Bookstore Near You – It’s Not Borders
“Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits,” a literature and culture blog, has generated a state-by-state list of independent bookstores located in the vicinity of the Borders’ that have closed/gone out of business.
2011 Tournament of Books Bracket Unveiled
Continuing in their effort to counter the hurtful notion that us bookworms are nebbish and anemic, The Morning News recently published the bracket for their annual Tournament of Books.
Salon reports on Kirill Yeskov’s novel The Last Ringbearer, an alternative (read: fake) history of the battle that ends Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The novel was published in his native Russia in 1999 but has only recently been translated into English do to a realistic fear of the Tolkien estate’s litigious nature and Christopher Tolkien’s ability to transform himself into a huge flaming eye able to detect copyright infringement.
A Hockey Lesson from Margaret Atwood
As your token Canadian blogger, I do feel responsible to bring you the best and most absurd from Canadian literary culture. And what could be more Canadian than hockey and Margaret Atwood? Don’t worry if you’re not an expert; Peggy tells all, right here, right now.
Less Unobtainium, More Dance in 3D Films
Yay! I’m making all kinds of weird cooing noises right now because I love the work of Pina Bausch, the revolutionary former director of Germany’s Tanztheater Wuppertal, and I also have a childhood attachment to Wim Wenders (we were big fans of Wings of Desire in my family, that is probably strange?). I can’t imagine […]
Probably my favorite essay this week is Adam Kirsch’s piece in The New Republic on today’s bestselling book in France.
Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Werner Herzog’s narration verges on self-parody (probably because it’s so ripe for it) during the lowest points of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a mostly unfocused but sometimes beautiful exploration of the world’s oldest cave paintings. Once a year, a group of French academics are allowed to explore and document the cave paintings, which eerily reveal […]
Classic Crime Writers from Beyond the Grave
Today in bizarre literary confluences: The editor of The Strand discovers 15 unpublished stories by the mystery writer Dashiell Hammett at the Harry Ranson Center in Texas. Apparently they’re really good. Meanwhile, Raymond Chandler’s wife’s ashes are sprinkled on his grave, 60 years after his death. While researching the author a historian discovered Chandler had […]