I thought it’d be tough. I thought it’d be hard work. But I also thought I’d be able to do it. I mean, I read quickly. But it was a huge ask. It did just swallow up my year. I got to a point where I was actually dreaming mash-ups of the books I was reading. I would wake up in the morning and go, “Did that happen?”
Category: words
Judges Overturn Public Vote In The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize
Democracy shamocracy, right? “Sweet Fruit, Sour Land by Rebecca Ley is the winner of the 2018 Not the Booker Prize. Our three judges have taken the brave decision to overrule the public vote and put their weight behind this dark dystopian novel in the place of Ariel Kahn’s optimistic and gentle Raising Sparks.”
The People Trying To Figure Out What’s True Now
Sarah Schulman’s new book is about people trying to figure out whom to blame, and a state where corruption at the very top leeches into every relationship. Where does her protagonist find some reality? In AA meetings. “The sheer humanity of people being able to admit their flaws in a world in which no one will admit their flaws is illuminating.”
Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas?
The Man Booker Prize short-listed authors explain, at least a little, how their brains work.
Who Started The Biggest Library Fire In Modern History?
It’s a mystery – one that Susan Orlean, author of the new The Library Book, says may never be solved. But she started out wanting to write about the day-to-day life of a city library. “”I liked the idea of doing it in L.A., out of this contrarian idea that people don’t associate libraries with L.A., which made it kind of delectable.
The Joys Of A Midnight Book Launch Don’t Fade In Adulthood
Well, at least not when the book is a new one from Haruki Murakami. There are contests, and there are ghost cats and there’s pasta. “When during a quiz at the Three Lives launch party a woman won a large tote bag containing a bag of pasta and a jar of tomato sauce, she got the biggest cheers of the night.”
Maryse Conde Wins The ‘Alt-Nobel’ Prize For Literature
The Guadaloupean writer, author of I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem and other books, won The New Academy Prize in Literature, “a new prize established by a group of over 100 Swedish cultural figures as a substitute for this year’s Nobel in Literature, which was not awarded for the first time since 1949 because of a sexual misconduct scandal.”
Ovid, Patron Saint Of Pickup Artists: How The ‘Red Pill’ Guys Are (Mis-)Appropriating Classical Lit
Ashley Fetters talks with classics scholar Donna Zuckerberg (yes, Mark’s sister) about what the “Red Pill” community — “the corner of the internet dominated by men’s-rights activists, the alt-right, pickup artists, and the sex-eschewing communities known as Men Going Their Own Way” — finds in these ancient Latin books (e.g., Ovid’s Ars Amatoria) and how they misread and misuse the texts.
Here’s How To Pick Who Will Win The Man Booker Prize
With a different set of judges each year, it is a fool’s errand to try to guess the eventual winner. So I have always had a simple formula: never judge the books – study the judges.
For Nearly 2,000 Years, The Aeneid Was Europe’s Most Influential Work Of Literature. Why’s It So Uncomfortable Now?
Daniel Mendelsohn: “While our forebears looked confidently to the text of the Aeneid for answers, today it raises troubling questions. … Two thousand years after its appearance, we still can’t decide if [Virgil’s] masterpiece is a regressive celebration of power as a means of political domination or a craftily coded critique of imperial ideology — a work that still has something useful to tell us.”