Asides

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Joseph O'Neill profiles Beyond A Boundary - the C.L.R James book on cricket and the Carribean - in The Atlantic. Yes, cricket. Yes, in The Atlantic. No, you are not dreaming.

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According to the Times,

"THERE are many ways to console someone when a multimillion-dollar business deal falls through. Firing off a “tough break” e-mail message punctuated by a frown-face emoticon is not one of them."

Really? :(

(via)

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Michael Goldenberg, screenwriter for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, talks to Salon about the "pleasures and pitfalls" of the adaptation process.

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Why y'all will never have daughters and why men who harass women are not sexist. These and other such politically incorrect truths... (via)

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There is a new book called More Sex is Safer Sex and it is written by a male economist called Landsburg. Clever plan, Mr. Landsburg. Here is a New York Times review of the book that questions the value of the recent spate of "popular" economics books that purport to unlock the mysteries of the world using cold, hard numbers. And on a unrelated note, here is James Surowiecki (whose book we loved!) on The Pirates' Code.

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Martin Cruz Smith (MSNBC helpfully informs us that he is "one of those writers who get such high-mindedly good reviews that you wonder if he's any fun. Relax: he's literate and exciting") has just written his newest Arkady Renko novel - it's called Stalin's Ghost - and the Times carries a high-mindedly good review of it. Meanwhile, from Time Magazine, here is a review of Gorky Park, the first Arkady Renko book.

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Steel yourself for some bad news: Pesky scientists at Clemson University have apparently determined that applying the five-second rule to dropped food will not actually prevent the food from gathering bacteria. And apparently, there is no exception for key lime pies. No wonder science sucks.

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A John Irving review of  Günter Grass's Peeling the Onion. [etcetera: We'll even read phonebooks if Irving writes them. ]




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Haruki Murakami on music (and language). (Older Murakami posts [1] [2] [3] )

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A few guys at Industrial Light and Magic are "working on the side" making an Arthur C Clarke short story (Maelstrom II) into a movie. Wired has a few cool pictures. (via)

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Overheard in New York. Laugh out loud exchanges from the greatest(!) city on earth. (Most popular exchanges).

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A comic strip ... about comic sans. (via)

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An Illustrated History of the Bikini, from Slate. Yes, illustrated. Bye.

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A Chitrita Banerji essay in Salon, on the importance of fish in Bengali kitchens.

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 Yeah, we know this is old; but it is so much fun. Plus, we get to take the high ground and say that when other blogs cover cheap stuff like Padma leaving Rushdie, we cover important things like this feud.

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An Ian McEwan profile (masquerading as a review)  from the latest issue of the New York Review of Books. (Also in this issue: an excerpt from Coetzee's upcoming Diary of A Bad Year).

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Slate "celebrates" Nancy Drew.

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How Blyton and Rowling carefully cultivate(d) their personas for public consumption - the former a bit more than the latter. The Telegraph investigates, in an article that reads rather abrupt. And only the millionth article on the power of Potter.

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By now, it is almost official: Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero is good, but not as good as The English Patient, or even Anil's Ghost. Yvonne Zipp is lukewarm on the book ("more poetry than plot") while Janet Maslin is a bit more positive. (" initially difficult, but the more you give "Divisadero," the more it gives in return." ). Manish says the same thing too, in fewer words.

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From The Atlantic, here is Raymond Chandler holding court on detective fiction. And while on The Atlantic,  some writing tips from the biggies.

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Jane Austen has been in the news a lot of late, and Salon explains "why a 200 year old author of only half a dozen novels" gets so much play and Newsweek tells us "why Austen and why now?" [Also, links to some of her works at the Online Literature Network]

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How do we know plastic bags take 500 years to break down in a landfill? Juliet Lapidos explains (Slate Magazine).

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The Library of America has recently released an anthology of Philip K. Dick's work from the 60's, and the Dave Itzkoff writes a gushing review of the book for the Times.

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Ars Technica covers the backlash against Intelligent Design in Europe. And (via Slashdot), a British Government announcement that Intelligent Design has no place in science.

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From the Time archives, we extract an old short story from perennial etcetera favorite Neal Stephenson: The Great Simoleon Caper includes elements that would later become a Stephenson staple - "encryption, digital currency and distributed republics". [Related post]

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A hilarious "digested" version of Tina Brown's The Diana Chronicles in the Guardian this week.

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A couple of Haruki Murakami short stories for today: New York Mining Disaster from his latest short story collection (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman), and On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning from The Elephant Vanishes, his first (and my favorite) collection of short stories. Reading Murakami's short fiction is the closest one can get to reading poetry without actually reading it.

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Jai Arjun Singh reviews Closely Watched Trains on Jabberwock.

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In a construction project that will eventually reach across 2,050 miles, hundreds of rivers and long stretches of forests and fields, India has been quietly sealing itself off from Bangladesh, its much poorer neighbor. [India's Border Fence Encloses Bangladesh - Newsday.com]

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A Woody Allen short story in the Telegraph: "It is said Dostoyevsky wrote for money to sponsor his lust for the roulette tables of St Petersburg. Faulkner and Fitzgerald too leased their gifts to ex-schmatte moguls who stacked the Garden of Allah with scriveners brought west to spitball box-office reveries [...]"


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Several prominent novelists - including Ian McEwan, David Mitchell and Kiran Desai -talk to the Guardian about the books they read when traveling. (Here is Part 2). My list appears in part 3 ;) [via Prufrock's Page]

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 David Zane Mairowitz's graphic guide to Kafka's life gives the man his soul back, according to this review at Bookslut.

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The Language Log on Plagiarism and Allusion.

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Louis Menand profiles Michael Ondaatje for the New Yorker, in the wake of the release of Ondatje's new novel “Divisadero”.

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Anthony Lane on Nancy Drew. 'nuff said.

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Falstaff has good things to say about Haruki Murakami's After Dark. [Related Post]

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Tom Evslin on Bill Gates's management "style." (via Slashdot).

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A Pittsburg lawfirm is now the subject of a congressional investigation after a video of one of their lawyers discussing ways to "get around" pesky federal government regulations on hiring H1-Bs shows up on YouTube.

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Pankaj Mishra reviews Martha Nussbaum's The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future in the New York Review of Books.

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Siddhartha Deb, writes in The Nation about how coverage of India in the Western media is a distorted version of reality.

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Ilan Stevens, on why One Hundred Years Of Solitude is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most important work. (Via Arts & Letters Daily).