For fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series (both the books and the films), a long wait is over. The Hobbit, prequel to the trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King) has finally been given the go-ahead by the Tolkien family, who had delayed the…
For book geeks, October is a month of thrills. First, on October 7, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. The Swiss Academy praised the author “for his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” On October 12, the…
One of the reasons for the endurance of the works of William Shakespeare is their ability to be adapted in many different ways. Romeo and Juliet has been set in during the Civil War and in Chicago's ganglands of the 1920s. The Comedy of Errors got the 1970s disco treatment. Richard III was once produced…
Read More "The Tempest With a Twist and the Nobel in Literature"
"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you…
Read More "Twentieth Anniversary of Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”"
This week it was announced that the infamous Algonquin Hotel has been purchased by the Marriott hotel chain. In June of 1919, a group of writers, critics, journalists, and actors—among them, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Edna Ferber, Alexander Woollcott, and Harpo Marx—began meeting for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel. The hotel was a short distance from the offices…
""Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you." ~ David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest Indeed it is unfair that the literary world lost one of its most unique and inspiring voices when David Foster Wallace committed suicide in 2008, but he may still have something to teach us. At the time of his death, Wallace had been working…
Read More "The Pale King: David Foster Wallace’s Unfinished Novel To Be Published"
One of the most coveted accolades in the literary world is to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. As 1996 winner Graham Swift commented, "Prizes don't make writers and writers don't write to win prizes, but in the near-glut of literary awards now on offer, the Booker remains special. It's the one which, if…
Books to the ceiling, books to the sky, / My piles of books are a mile high. / How I love them! / How I need them! / I'll have a long beard by the time I read them. ~Arnold Lobel Have you ever wondered just how many books are actually out there? Well, thanks…
Read More "Just How Many Books Are There? Google’s Massive Project to Count Them ALL"
