Literary & Media Indulgences - 2/10/2013

 

-- The death of the Timbuktu manuscripts has been greatly exaggerated. More of the story at Harper's: "How Timbuktu Saved its Books."

-- "Peddling 'democracy' as if it were a popularity contest..." A really interesting look at the radical renovations of the New York Public Library.

-- This is 13-year-old Elvis Presley checking out a library book.

-- A mystery donor rescues rare books at the Boston Public Library.

-- Doctors in England will soon start prescribing books to their patients suffering from anxiety and depression.

-- Meet HIPPO Reads: "Think of us as TED Talks for readers."

-- Tagore and the poetics of modern India.

-- Listening for the Jabberwock: The tendencies of literary translation.

-- Charles Baudelaire translated Edgar Allen Poe into French, and you can't imagine how giddy I got when I learned this.

-- Fifty years ago, the modern Welsh language movement began when activists shut down a bridge.

-- The bones of Richard III: On the shape of a spine and the shape of a life. Wonderful Stephen Greenblatt writing in The New Yorker.

-- Encoding Shakespeare into DNA.

-- How did I not know until this weekend that Ai's collected poems are newly published this month?!

-- Not unrelatedly: on the worth of memorizing poetry.

-- Jamaica Kinkaid read all poetry until she was ten years old, then read her first novel (Jane Eyre). Makes perfect sense. See also: "10 questions for Jamaica Kinkaid."

-- What does it even mean for a writer to retire?

-- The phantom bookstores of Manhattan.

-- Fill the Shelves: this is fun. H/t Katha Pollitt.

-- A new cover for The Bell Jar for its fiftieth anniversary inspires online parodies; hilarity ensues. H/t Bill Shea. See also, in the London Review of Books: "Silly Covers for Lady Novelists."

-- What's up with the backlash against Kwani?, the Kenyan publisher and literary agitator?

-- Chika Ugikwe, who just won a $100,000 Nigerian literary prize, is interviewed in Vanguard. Of interest, she is working on an update of the Igbo dictionary. "It's a labour of love." Via The Literary Saloon.

-- "In Praise of the Language Police."

-- "Torture and Taboo: On Elaine Scarry."

-- Via the Boston Review: Latin American constitutions established some of the most significant guarantees of human rights. So why is the on-the-ground reality of those rights so often distorted?

-- "Evil is one of the most interesting themes for me." Jorge Volpi, interviewed at The Quarterly Conversation.

-- Jessica Valenti is interviewed on NPR about the fiftieth anniversary of The Feminine Mystique. (Here's the Isak review of the 1963 revolution-in-a-book.)

-- On the myth of women's ascendence. This is a great book review. H/t Jina Moore.

-- Rebecca Solnit: "What we don't talk about when we talk about gender."

-- This is what the reclamation of Detroit looks like.

-- My pal Amy's haunting and gorgeous photo of Detroit is National Geographic's Photo of the Day. For more of her work, look here.

-- You don't have to be superhuman to commute by bicycle.

-- "The Lost Wolves of New England."

-- I just love Tom Ashbrook.

-- The Rumpus interviews comics artist Natalie Dee.

-- "All of your book reviews are just advertisements for Amazon, says Amazon."

-- A startling wintertime image of the town where I grew up.

-- The forgotten legacy of three Swiss writer-travelers.

-- "Jews are best understood as a people with a shared literary history."

-- The library press gets hot.

-- Edwin Mellen Press sues a librarian for libel.

-- An Idaho state legislator introduced a bill that would require high school students to read Ayn Rand. See also the NPR take.

-- Sister Arts: The provocations and promise of the friendship between Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde.

-- Vi Hart: A music box, Bach, and a Möbius strip.

-- The Smitten Word: Writing sex.

 

About the Image: The public library in Montrose, Scotland.