Quick Hits
July 20, 2011
On Treating Books Badly 20
by Bezalel Stern
Books as books – as tangible things you can hold in your hands and show off to curious onlookers on the subway and friends who visit your apartment – are something I hold in high esteem. But there is, as I say, some pleasure in letting go, in allowing a book to get wet, in treasuring a book not for what it looks like but for what it says.
July 18, 2011
Exclusive: The First Lines of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 16
by C. Max Magee
Classical music and a taxi ride kick off Murakami’s long awaited novel.
June 16, 2011
On Bloomsdays Past 0
by Henriette Lazaridis Power
We brought the world of Ulysses to, say, the Tivoli, or the Grand Canal, or the Art Museum and the Rocky statue.
June 14, 2011
Last Words 14
by Frank Kovarik
When do we, as writers, accept that a piece is as good as it will ever be, even if it’s not that great? When do we decide that a piece will never be good enough to be published?
May 23, 2011
Exclusive: The First Lines of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot 14
by C. Max Magee
A bookish first paragraph kicks off this new novel set to come out in October.
May 19, 2011
Goodnight Stars, Goodnight Air: Reconnecting with Children’s Books as a Parent 13
by Kevin Hartnett
The market for children’s books is probably more resistant to cultural churn than just about any other slice of the consumer economy; it’s a closed circuit that reproduces itself one generation after another.