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Literature

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." -C.S. Lewis

Stories

Stories 21 - 40 of 146

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July 2008
- Bard-Working Librarians Help Nab Book Thief
  
  Washington Post | Jul 11, 08 4:29 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Quick-thinking librarians have helped recover a valuable book of Shakespeare's works stolen from a British university 10 years ago, the Washington Post reports. A man who arrived unannounced at Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library with a copy of the 1623 First Folio set off "alarm bells" with his tale of the $2.5 million volume's provenance, says a library official. More »
- Anne of Green Gables, at 100, Goes Legit
  
  Slate | Jul 10, 08 12:31 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Impetuous redheaded orphan Anne of Green Gables got the biggest gift of all on her 100th birthday: Official introduction into the literary canon. The Modern Library will issue a centennial edition of the first book in the series of eight. Some scholars bristle at the decision to place Anne alongside Huck Finn and Anna Karenina, dubbing the novels sentimental and their readers nostalgic, but Meghan O’Rourke comes to her defense on Slate. More »
- Wife Shouldn't Worry Laura Bush: Dowd
  
  New York Times | Jul 9, 08 1:11 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Words like "smear" and "gossip" have flown around American Wife , the novel probing the secret life of Laura Bush, but the book itself is pretty harmless, Maureen Dowd writes in the New York Times . Kings and queens have always inspired art, Dowd notes, and Wife isn’t sensationalist—it’s a well-researched attempt to get inside a guarded but intriguing figure. More »
- Evangelicals' Sex Talk Has Hidden Agenda
  
  Salon | Jul 8, 08 7:50 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Sex is no longer taboo for the religious right—but the evangelical sexual revolution is no liberation movement, historian Dagmar Herzog argues in her new book, Sex in Crisis . Instead, Herzog asserts that “evangelicals, over the last couple of decades, have beaten liberals at their own game by adapting liberal rhetoric for conservative ends," writes Louis Bayard in Salon . He thinks, however, that Herzog has overstated the case a bit. More »
- Obama as Writer: He's the 'Real Deal'
  
  New Republic | Jul 8, 08 2:37 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - If it's true that the style is the man, then it makes sense, literary critic Andrew Delbanco writes in the New Republic , to take the measure of Barack Obama from his memoirs. Taking a tour of Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope , Delbanco finds a bit of overwriting, a propensity for cinematic flourishes, a sensitivity to the complexities of character, and an ability to use local details to "open out into universal experience." More »
- 'Laura Bush' No Conservative in New Novel
  
  Radar | Jul 7, 08 4:44 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - In a new book unlikely to top the presidential reading list, author Curtis Sittenfeld fictionalizes the story of Laura Bush. Radar got a sneak peek and calls the novel "a masterful highbrow-lowbrow mash-up." The narrator is a librarian who falls in love with a future president upon seeing his crotch, undergoes an abortion, and has steamy sex with the brother of her high school sweetheart (who dies in a car crash she causes). More »
- Is Something Rotten in the Bard's Works?
  
  NPR | Jul 6, 08 12:37 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Did William Shakespeare really write the plays attributed to him? The question remains the subject of an intense academic debate, NPR reports. Those who doubt the “man from Stratford” penned his plays point to a lame rhyming epitaph on the supposed bard’s headstone, and to lack of documents tying him to his works—or even suggesting he was a writer. More »
- Gonzo Gets It
  
  Rotten Tomatoes | Jul 4, 08 8:24 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - There’s a “fascinating history lesson” in the documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson , “a lively collage of interviews and found materials,” writes A. O. Scott in the New York Times . The film cements the journalist's “place in the great American parade of cranks, renegades and sages,” Scott adds. It's “all you could wish for in a doc about the man,” notes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times . More »
June 2008
- That's Sir Salman Rushdie
  
  Associated Press | Jun 25, 08 12:54 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Queen Elizabeth officially knighted Salman Rushdie today, the AP reports, a year after the award was announced to widespread Muslim protest. “I have no regrets about any of my work,” said Rushdie, when asked about his novel The Satanic Verses, for which the Shah of Iran awarded him a “death sentence” and forced him into hiding. No cameras were allowed at the knighting, which the 61-year-old described as a “private moment.” More »
- Christian Novel Outstrips Oprah Pick
  
  New York Times | Jun 24, 08 9:16 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Once rejected by multiple mainstream publishers, the slim Christian novel The Shack is flying off shelves, topping the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list. “Everybody that I know has bought at least 10 copies,” says one devotee. The Times looks at a blockbuster built around an unconventional depiction of God—as a jolly black woman named “Papa.” More »
- Sentences That 'Evoke an Entire Universe'
  
  Esquire | Jun 22, 08 7:32 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Celebrating 75 years of fiction, Esquire offers some samples from "writers who could evoke an entire universe with a single sentence." A smattering: "Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well," Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro , August, 1936. More »
- Nixonland Gets 'Excellent' Prez Utterly Wrong
  
  New York Sun | Jun 19, 08 4:46 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - The biography Nixonland is a hatchet job on an “excellent president,” media mogul Conrad Black (from behind bars) writes in the New York Sun , picking apart author Rick Perlstein’s slights—and reminding of the profound accomplishments of the 37th president. Beyond crediting Nixon with coarsening the political discourse permanently, Perlstein revels in his “manic, corrupt, rat cunning,” plus, Black notes, “cynicism, opportunism and chicanery.” More »
- Beastie Directs Film, Reilly Does Double Header
  
  Esquire | Jun 15, 08 8:26 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Who will reign in pop culture next month? A dead drug addict and rapper-turned-filmmaker are on Esquire 's list of predictions: Actor John C. Reilly will compete with Will Farrell for jokes in the upcoming laffer, Step Brothers. Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has directed Gunnin' for that #1 Spot , a doc about high school basketball prospects in Harlem. More »
- Summer's 'Most Enchanting Debut Novel'
  
  New York Times | Jun 13, 08 4:25 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle , the debut novel from former software developer David Wroblewski, is “a great, big, mesmerizing read, audaciously envisioned as classic Americana," Janet Maslin raves in the New York Times . "Pick up this book and expect to feel very, very reluctant to put it down," she says of a coming-of-age story involving a deaf boy and the dogs his family breeds. More »
- Rowling's Potter Prequel Conjures Up $49K for Charity
  
  Reuters | Jun 11, 08 5:01 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - JK Rowling’s handwritten “prequel” to the Harry Potter books has sold for $49,000 at a charity auction to benefit the PEN writers organization, Reuters reports. In the 800-word story, which takes place before Harry’s birth, the boy wizard’s father and Sirius Black use magic to elude police in a high-speed chase. The work also manages to brush aside rumors that an eighth Potter book is in the works. More »
- 2 Books Detail Sex-a-Day Vows
  
  New York Times | Jun 8, 08 3:19 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Can non-stop sex revitalize a marriage? Two American couples have books coming out that chronicle their attempts to sex it up, the New York Times reports. Just Do It records 101 nights of romance intended to offset a couple's boredom in Boulder, Colo., while 365 Nights documents a year of whoopee that a Bible-loving Republican wife gave her husband in Charlotte, NC. More »
- Not Very PC: Why Typewriters Beat Computers
  
  BBC | Jun 8, 08 2:31 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Favored by novelists and technophobes and sold out of car trunks, typewriters remain the implement of choice for some Brits, reports BBC. Despite their weight and Internet deficiencies, the tangible writing experience free from computer meltdowns or deletions may save the typewriter from extinction—at least for now. One sales rep says he’s “amazed” his company still sells models at nearly $1,000. More »
- 'Realish' Sedaris Book Skirts Memoir Scrutiny
  
  New York Times | Jun 8, 08 10:45 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - With his new book of nonfiction essays, Engulfed in Flames , David Sedaris finds himself engulfed in questions of truth and accuracy. In America, the recent explosion of memoirs has been followed with one scandal after another, prompting more scrutiny of the humorist’s work. “I do think Sedaris exaggerates too much for a writer using a nonfiction label," a New Republic writer argued last year. More »
- Rowling Casts Spell at Harvard
  
  Boston Globe | Jun 6, 08 7:10 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Harry Potter birth mom JK Rowling yesterday urged Harvard graduates at their commencement to use their imaginations on more than wizards and muggles to envision—and create—a better world. She recalled the rewarding time she spent when she was younger working for prisoners of totalitarian regimes for Amnesty International. "Those who choose not to empathize" with people suffering "enable real monsters," she said. More »
- Graphic Bod Novel Jars Germany
  
  New York Times | Jun 6, 08 4:16 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - A highly explicit novel that explores every body crevice of its teenage female narrator has scandalized Germany—and topped bestseller lists, the New York Times reports. The controversial novel, which mixes the anatomical and scatological with the erotic, is a feminist statement challenging a world that expects women to be overly shaved and sanitized, said author Charlotte Roche. More »

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