The Book Reporter

natgeofound: A girl stands in front of her hut on the Painted...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:39:22 -0400

A girl stands in front of her hut on the Painted Desert in Arizona in 1929.Photograph by Clifton R. Adams, National Geographic

Holiday reading list for the Amalfi Coast, in collaboration with...

Tue, 28 May 2013 09:11:13 -0400

Holiday reading list for the Amalfi Coast, in collaboration with C & T. Once again, I shall attempt to climb the mountain of Middlemarch.

Goodbye to the treehouse. Moving in and out of it was hell on...

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:04:00 -0400

Goodbye to the treehouse. Moving in and out of it was hell on earth, but the middle bit was pretty near heaven. I’ll miss it so much. Not the raccoons though. Those guys were the worst.

queryquagmire: Reddit. What you are describing is Reddit. Or...

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:10:03 -0400

queryquagmire:

Reddit. What you are describing is Reddit. Or Tumblr. Probably Tumblr.

I never really did get into the rhythm of life in a college town, not the whole time I was here. In...

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:40:00 -0400

I never really did get into the rhythm of life in a college town, not the whole time I was here. In a college town, people come and go so brutally that you resist and resist, then make a friend that matters just as they go off to Arizona or LA or another country altogether, back to their parents or to a new job or off with a partner. In a college town people don’t settle down in the same way - they aren’t making friends for the raising of their families, or the steady blossoming of their careers. It isn’t like a city, where you see people through stages and out the other side. But all that alienation I felt when I first came to Ithaca, when I thought, uncharitably, how can these people see each other through: that alienation was wrong-headed, I think.

Sitting in the Cornell graduation reading today, watching a member of my semi-muggle writing group read her poems, I was suddenly moved beyond words. I was moved not just because she’s such a talented poet or because I like her so much, but because she addressed poems to specific people: one to each sister, one to her parents, and one to her cohort. I got it in a flash, the point of all this: life in a college town is special because it’s a stage. Because there is something fruitful about the fall, something dug-in about the winter, something hopeful about the spring. Because in early summer, when the wildflowers start to really go for it, you can dedicate the work you did to whoever you like, and the summer hovers warm and empty in front of everyone, and things will change. I wish I had known that when I arrived and not just as I’m leaving, though perhaps that’s also the thing about a college town.

Rookie is hiring! We’re looking for a full-time editor.

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:43:35 -0400

Rookie is hiring! We’re looking for a full-time editor.:

Tragically, I think I am officially too old for this job now, but I bet there’s an amazing post-teenager with 3 years of fact-checking skills who would be perfect for Rookie. I love Rookie. Someone go work there and be brilliant at it! Wear weird clothes and talk about your feelings and glue glitter onto the internet!

Kristopher Jansma: The Royal Pinkie | Bookreporter.com

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:16:43 -0400

Kristopher Jansma: The Royal Pinkie | Bookreporter.com:

Honestly, I don’t if it’s because I’m not in the same country as my own mum today or what, but this is the mother’s day story that really made me weepy. Kris Jansma is a great writer and his wife is one of my favourite people of all time and he hits the nail on the goddamn head with this one. Congrats to both of them on the new kid, and to Kris for his book, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards. Sniffle.

thanksforsharing: Mother’s Day lemon bars (“Lucas’ Luscious” on...

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:27:26 -0400

thanksforsharing:

Mother’s Day lemon bars (“Lucas’ Luscious” on @food52 http://food52.com/blog/3440-lucas-luscious-lemon-bars-a-gift-from-mom), this year with a successful almond crust.

Ooof, on this Mother’s Day, a lovely bit of writing about lemon bars, and Mothers. Whenever I write about my mum I too am also writing about cooking, really.

A List Of 21 Books I Really Couldn't Bear To Throw Away After The Great Book Cull Of 2013, In Which We Were Supposed To Throw Away Everything.

Sat, 11 May 2013 10:45:25 -0400

Waterspotted US Vintage copy of Where Angels Fear To Tread
Unwieldy neon green hardback of Christ Stopped At Eboli
Cheap paperback of the 1,000 page Abruzzo Trology by Ignatio Silone, weighs as much as a baby
1 Copy Hello! Magazine commemorating the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton
Walking to Greenham - Ann Pettit
Signs and Wonders, poems by Charles Martin
The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land - Diana Wynne Jones
Mussolini’s Italy - R. J. Bosworth
The Heart of The Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh. Gift.
1st Edition of The Pale King, unread.
Warlock, by Oakley Hall. Gift from boss.
‘Four Plays’ - Eduardo di Filippo
Returning the Serve Intelligently, by Sterling Lord. Gift from first ever publishing boss.
Reeds in The Wind/Cosima by Grazia Deledda
1968 Folio Edition of Four Quartets, in which my Dad has written in the front “And all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well”
Mexican Miracle Paintings Postcards (why?)
More Home Cooking - Laurie Colwin
Copy of Dark Horse Magazine with an Interview with Sharon Olds
The Viceroys - Federico Roberto
1st Edition of In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan
A Key to Chinese Speach and Writing, by Zhang PengPeng, bought in Kunming, Yunnan. Annotations on the 1st 3 pages. Nothing on the rest.
Small Blue Hardback of the Essay ‘Positano’ by John Steinbeck.

83-year-old nun convicted of sabotage for breach of US atomic complex

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:57:29 -0400

83-year-old nun convicted of sabotage for breach of US atomic complex:

Three activists, including an 83-year-old nun, who broke into a US nuclear weapons facility in Tennessee were convicted on Wednesday of interfering with national security.

Sister Megan Rice FTW.

newyorker: David Denby on “The Great Gatsby”: “Luhrmann’s...

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:49:00 -0400

newyorker:

David Denby on “The Great Gatsby”: “Luhrmann’s vulgarity is designed to win over the young audience, and it suggests that he’s less a filmmaker than a music-video director with endless resources and a stunning absence of taste.” http://nyr.kr/1414CXu

Today in Film Criticism News, David Denby (who is my second favourite New Yorker film critic) has a look at the new Gatsby movie and comes down heavily on the side of ‘pretty much a turkey’. Considering the trailer makes it look like a stone cold catastrophe, I think he’s probably being fairer than he needs to be. I actually like seeing shonky adaptations of favourite books because there’s something satisfying about the camaraderie of disapproval (Rachel Weiss, e.g., is the only possible Anna Karenina, but it wouldn’t stop me seeing the Kiera version to confirm my suspicions), but I really don’t want to see a jump-cut version of Gatsby. Have some decency. And to waste the two actors best suited to Nick and Gatsby to boot.

Most of the time when I blindly grab a book on the way out of...

Tue, 07 May 2013 06:55:00 -0400

Most of the time when I blindly grab a book on the way out of the house to read on a journey it works out pretty well, but this was a classic miss-step. Colm Tiobin’s Travels in Catholic Europe, taken to read on a hen weekend in Whitby? I advise against it. You get spotted reading it while eating Shreddies in the morning and your fellow hen-party attendees look at you prett-eee strangely, I can tell you. I don’t know what I was thinking! ’Oh Hey, I love Colm Toibin’, I suppose. I’m sure it’s great, but I put it away for a quieter time and read the back of the Shreddies packet instead.

There is a famous mention of these cakes in The Leopard - the...

Fri, 03 May 2013 18:27:29 -0400

There is a famous mention of these cakes in The Leopard - the Prince likes the ones bought from the nuns at the abbey in Agrigento in Sicily. The slightly churro- looking ones in the top left hand corner are called biscotti ricci (curled cakes) and my Dad found, to his nerdy delight, that the nuns are still there, and you can still go to the grate at the abbey and buy these cakes. We ate some this evening. They were mealy, marzipan-like and good with coffee. It reminded me that The Leopard is my favourite book mostly because of the stupendous cake metaphors throughout.

duttonbooks: theparisreview: Today’s Tom Gauld cartoon.

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:28:20 -0400

duttonbooks:

theparisreview:

Today’s Tom Gauld cartoon.

Hey! So we’re on the Refinery blog today! I think this is...

Wed, 01 May 2013 08:06:45 -0400

Hey! So we’re on the Refinery blog today! I think this is my favourite photo of the bookshop.

Claire Messud winning today.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:28:01 -0400

Publisher's Weekly: I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.
Claire Messud: For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that?

bookavore: Yesterday I got into library school. It is making me...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:01:48 -0400

bookavore:

Yesterday I got into library school. It is making me reflective. This was my first library card. It was handed to me with a Twinkie. Due to my upbringing, it was the first time I had ever seen a Twinkie, much less eaten one, and I decided whatever a library was, it had to be great. When I found out that they’d let me take up to 30 books home at a time, no questions asked, I was hooked. And now here we are!

George Jones has died, and with him one of the great voices of...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:12:00 -0400

George Jones has died, and with him one of the great voices of our lifetime. George Jones was one of the craziest, country-est singers that ever existed. Try to listen to his song Grand Tour without feeling a surge of beautiful sadness, go on, just try:

Nick Tosches’s essay about George Jones is also my favourite piece of writing of all time. No kidding, you can keep your Tolstoy and your Joyce and your Austen and your everything else. That essay is the most a perfect example of music journalism, of American writing, of America, that I know. You can’t get at it on the internet, so to read it I think you have to Buy the Nick Tosches Reader (and you SHOULD), but I have for the first time taken a screenshot off Google Reader because I think it’s that important.

You’ll never guess what I did today, said my husband’s best friend Baker one night in a...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:33:00 -0400

You’ll never guess what I did today, said my husband’s best friend Baker one night in a bar in the East Village. I was interviewed by This American Life.

And then he told us the story. About how one day he got a letter from a guy in England whose autistic son loved his paintings, and about what happened after that. We listened to it this morning and when the end of it came I knew what it would be, and I was also so moved, because Baker. He’s a beautiful man, and a beautiful artist. Have a listen to act 3 of the latest This American Life, and you’ll see.

BOSTON REVIEW: Ostinato

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:24:42 -0400

BOSTON REVIEW: Ostinato:

The new company logo is a torch inside an obelisk
inside a five-pointed star inside a sixteen-sided die
against a backdrop of blazing sunlight. It took years
of focus groups, an in-house creative team collecting
only the smoothest, flattest stones from the banks

of the minor tributaries…

Ooooh, this poem is so good.