Missed this one – Stop Smiling’s blog posts that a lost novel by Vladimir Nabakov (you know, of Lolita gravitas) will see publication.

Slate has a quirky and interesting essay on the history of the hangover.

The latest trend in the publishing world is the high-end superbook. The Independent offers an interesting peak into this new facet of print:

Despite the credit crunch, an entire industry has sprung up to cater to an increasing number of customers willing to spend thousands of pounds on luxury books from the shelves of the world’s most exclusive shops.

Many “superbooks” target wealthy sports enthusiasts – the kind who can afford a corporate box at a cup final. A luxury biography of the boxing legend Muhammad Ali, published last year by Taschen, featured four silver gelatine prints by the photographer Howard L Bingham, signed by Ali himself, and cost £5,000.

Lisa Taddeo wrote a very interesting exercise in fiction. She wrote, from a first person perspective, a diary of Heath Ledger’s final days. Read it at Esquire.

How did she do it?

To write a conceivable chronicle of Heath Ledger’s final days, writer Lisa Taddeo visited the actor’s neighborhood, talked to the store owners and bartenders who may have seen him during his last week, and read as many accounts and rumors about the events surrounding his death as possible. She filled in the rest with her imagination. The result is what we call reported fiction. Some of the elements are true. (Ledger was in London. He was a regular at the Beatrice Inn and the Mirö Cafe. And he was infatuated with Nick Drake.) Others are not.

I love it! A great feature of quirky and entertaining nuggets on McSweeney’s entitled ‘Open Letters to People or Entities who are Unlikely to Respond’. The main index page is here.

An Open Letter to My Across-the-Street Neighbor Who Always Does His Yard Work in His Scrubs

Dear Neighbor,

Yes, I know you’re a doctor—well, OK, almost a doctor. We all know you’re almost a doctor. And I promise, on behalf of all of us on the block, we won’t forget that you’re almost a doctor. So, if you want to just wear ordinary clothes like the rest of us while doing your weekend mowing, watering, weeding, etc., go right ahead. It’s fine. Really. We won’t forget.

Sincerely,
The guy in the yellow house

Josh Getlin writing in the L.A. Times about a battle that is brewing where there are those who believe that literary blogs may have a place in the world, but they just cannot cut it when it comes to reviewing texts.

“If you were an author, would you want your book reviewed in the Washington Post and the New York Review of Books, or on a web site written by someone who uses the moniker NovelGobbler or Biogafriend?” Michael Dirda, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic, wrote in the Washington Post. “The book review section … remains the forum where new titles are taken seriously as works of art and argument, and not merely as opportunities for shallow grandstanding and overblown ranting.”

Lit-blogger Edward Champion fired back, ridiculing the notion that only printed book reviews matter: “It’s okay for the lit blogosphere to exist as a version of your Mom’s book club — it’s okay for us to talk books and authors and compare notes on favorites, as long as we keep our place,” snapped the San Francisco writer, who runs the Return of the Reluctant website. “Have you got that? We must not think for a minute that we contribute anything beyond serving as accessories to the real literary discussions…. We should buy books but not dare to offer well thought opinions on them.”

The accusations flew back and forth. But now there is a growing sense that enough is enough — and that the friction between old and new book media obscures the fact that the two are in bed together now, for better or worse. Often the same people who churn out literary blogs are reviewing books for mainstream reviews. (Champion, for example, has a review appearing in this week’s Los Angeles Times Book Review.)

What’s your take on all of this?

Photo: Mark Seliger

From GQ.com:

But to be sure that Colbert possesses the moral authority America so desperately needs, we subjected him to a highly confidential background check. Then, because we are the media and have no morals, we decided to betray his trust and publish his answers. Click here to read a selection, accompanied by Mark Seliger’s revealing portraits of GQ’s candidate.

J.R.R. Tolkien has been dead for over 34 years, but that is not stopping a ‘new’ novel of his coming to book shelves. His son Christopher has completed the novel The Children of Hurin based on unfinished manuscripts. The story does take place in Middle Earth, but before the time-line of the Lord of the Rings.

via the BBC

Here is a nice, but way too short interview with Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay), who talks about his new novel the The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

Q: Your book is a mystery set in parallel universe, about a police detective trying to solve a murder in “Alyeska,” the territory that Alaska could have been had it become a homeland for Jews during the second World War. In an odd way, the story comments upon September 11. How did you come up with the idea?

A: It grew out of an essay that I wrote several years ago that was a response to this strange little book called Say It in Yiddish. There’s a series of Say It books: Say It in Swahili, Say It in Spanish, etcetera. All of the others in the series have countries or regions associated with them. So, I started wondering in this essay, what’s this book for? Where would you take it? In the course of speculating on that, I considered possible Yiddish-speaking countries that might have come into existence if things had happened differently. I had read about this proposal once that Jewish refugees be allowed to settle in Alaska during World War II. I made a passing reference to it in the essay, but the idea stuck.

What’s more is that there is also an excerpt of the new novel.

Porsche AG is taking steps to increase it stake in Volkswagen AG to 31 percent, which will give it effective control of the company and put it in a position to trigger a buyout of the company.

As interesting as this news item is to automotive industry watchers and others, the above linked to article, which is Bloomberg’s article on this deal, contains this nugget of history:

Ferdinand Piech, whose family controls Porsche and whose grandfather started up Volkswagen in the 1930s under Adolf Hitler, has increased his control over Volkswagen since Porsche bought a stake a year and a half ago. A combination would realize the Porsche family’s goal of uniting two carmakers their relatives began and would be the largest takeover ever in the industry.

I pause to think of what a significant step backwards it must be for Porsche AG to have a connection to Hilter pointed out in the context of today’s corporate activity, especially given that we are taking about a take over.

The Oxford English Dictionary has added a few words to its collection: wiki, ta-da and irritainment, bimbette and tighty-whities. Oh my.

A great find on youtube by Artsjournal, Sylvia Plath reading her poem ‘Daddy’.

Eric Idle’s, of Monty Python fame, cousin is Peter Oundjian, the conductor of the Toronto Symphony. Elizabeth Renzetti of the Globe and Mail talks to them about how to mix classical music with comedy.

Success took them in different directions, and music brought them back together when Oundjian was guest-conducting the philharmonic in L.A., where Idle had settled. In 2003, Oundjian took up the baton at the TSO and the discussions about a collaboration in comedy began in earnest. “It was a series of conversations,” says Oundjian, “that got him wondering, ‘What can I do with an orchestra that’s more than just singing my funny songs? What can we do that creates a plot?’”

From Netbusinessblog 8 reasons why the masses love lists.

1. Instant Knowledge
2. Requires Little to No Individual Thought
3. Lists Have Authority
4. Easy to Memorize and Casually Mention in Conversation
5. Lists are Skimmable
6. Mobs Like Uniformity
7. Lists Have an Ending
8. People Like Counting

Hmmmm – not sure if I buy all of that.

The other day I picked up a new magazine that has hit the racks: Monocle. Here is the magazine’s concept as it appears on their website:

We believe it’s time for a new, global, European based media brand. With a keen focus, strong reporting, sharp wit and more classic approach to design, we’ve dubbed our venture Monocle. At the core there’s a monthly magazine delivering the most original coverage in global affairs, business, culture and design. Alongside, there’s a web-base broadcast component covering the same areas through a variety of bulletins, mini-documentaries and talk formats. Focus on informing and entertaining an international audience of disillusioned readers, listeners and viewers, it is our intention to create a community of the most interested and interesting people in the world.

Edited out of London, Monocle is staffed by a team pulled from the world’s leading news outlets, magazines and broadcasters. Conceived by Wallpaper* founder and Financial Times columnist Tyler Brûlé, the launch team calls on some of his old alumni and new talent from The Independent, the BBC, Branches of Condé Nast and a host of other news outlets. Versed in politics, popular culture, business affairs, media, architecture and design, the editorial team will cover the world from its London hub and dedicated bureaux in Tokyo, Zurich and New York. Monocle will be driven by offering original, never-before-seen content to an audience of well-heeled, intelligent opinion leaders around the world.

Issue one is packed with nuggets of current affairs information. There were a few things about the magazine that attracted my attention. First was the size – at 242 pages, Monocle is not a thin piece of content. Second, was the global scale of the of its coverage. Third was the breadth of coverage. The magazine covers a myriad of topics, from arts to business to politics. So, I am giving Monocle my endorsement. Go ahead and check it out, I have. Oh, it’s also worth the hefty price (I paid $12.50 Cdn).

Good Magazine has compiled its list of the 51 greatest magazines ever. Topping the list is Esquire. This Good piece is not just a list of the magazines, featuring the editor’s take on the publication. No, oh no. The piece also features a smart essay on magazines generally. For that alone, it’s worth your attention.

From our friends at Esquire:

We put 250 napkins in the mail to writers from all over the country — some with a half dozen books to their name, others just finishing their first. In return, we got nearly a hundred stories. We present a sampling here — from lush to spare, hilarious to terrifying.

Napkin fiction is what the name says, fiction written on napkins. You can read dozens of napkin fiction tales here.

Jay Ladin, in Cross Currents Magazine, writes about how he teaches Emily Dickinson and aims to explore her religious beliefs as they appear in her works.

It’s common for secular academics to assume that religious belief’s adherence to any religious system or ideology�is fundamentally at odds with the open-minded, exploratory enterprise of critical interpretation. That was certainly my assumption two autumns ago, when, as a new member of the English Department of the women’s college of an Orthodox Jewish university, I led a seminar-style exploration of Emily Dickinson’s poems about God. The question of Dickinson’s religious beliefs “what, if any, beliefs she held and what, if anything, her poems reveal of them�has long been a subject of debate among Dickinson scholars. As I expected, the question was of great interest to my students, who had grown up practicing a modern Orthodox form of Judaism. What I did not expect was that these young women, who knew little about poetry, less about Dickinson, and nothing about Christianity or its nineteenth-century New England manifestations, would see so clearly through the tangle of Dickinson’s contradictory portrayals of God and the equally contradictory conclusions scholars have drawn from them. I had assumed that the intellectual habits promoted by traditional religious belief and humanistic inquiry are inherently at odds, that while humanism encourages the exploration of complexity and contradiction, traditional belief encourages the opposite simplification, homogenization, retreat from the messiness of existence into the comfort of tautological projection. But rather than inhibiting their ability to engage with Dickinson’s challenging texts, my students’ lifelong immersion in Orthodox Judaism helped them recognize dynamics at work in Dickinson’s poems about God that my secular approach had obscured.

The top 10 selling books in Bangalore, India for last week according to the Hindu newspaper are:

Balondu Bhavageete edited by
S. Jayasimha and N.S. Sridhara
Murthy, R.N.R. Prakashana, Rs. 125

Khas Bath-2001 by Ravi Belagere,
Bhavana Prakashana, Rs. 125

Pinjar by Amrita Preetam, Translated
by L.C. Sumitra, Ankita Pustaka, Rs. 50

Tippu Sultan Kannada Drohiye? Edited
by Gouri Sundar, Sundara Prakashana,
Rs. 175

Kumara Gandharva by Shirish Joshi,
Lingayata Adhyana Samsthe, Rs. 30

Magalu Kanda Kuvempu by Tarini
Chidananda, Pustaka Prakashana, Rs. 240

Maduveya Album by Girish Karnad,
Manohara Granthamale, Rs. 60

Mahile Samaja Kaanoonu by
Dr. Geeta Krishnamurthy,

Navakarnataka Prakashana, Rs. 85
Vykum Kathegalu, Translated by
S. Gangadharaiah, Bisila Kolu
Prakashana, Rs. 100

Aa Ra Se Aaida Nage Barahagalu by
Aa.Ra.Se., Vasantha Prakashana, Rs. 90

Seed Magazine, via NASA, has a nice piece on how the future of space tourism and the increase of space imagery will hopefully increase the global conscious and increase care and effort in helping fix the planet. The piece also plays out a ballad to the majesty of the Earth’s beauty.

From the ISS, 230 miles up, the Earth is still familiar enough to identify with. Even for spacewalkers, the Earth fills almost the entire field of view. But for the 24 humans who have gone to the moon (12 of them have walked on the surface), the ability to see a tiny living Earth against the vastness of a hostile universe has had an even more profound effect. Their vision of and connection to humankind as a whole is perhaps best illustrated by Apollo astronaut “Rusty” Schweickart’s comment: “You realize that…on that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you—all of history and music and poetry and art…on that little spot you can cover with your thumb…and you realize…that there’s something new there, that the relationship is no longer what it once was.”