James Franco likes everyone to know that he's really smart and that he's very focused on his studies. That's why he does things like tweeting pics of his book shelf. Is that a copy of The Alchemist?
Jumat, 25 Maret 2011
Hipstellectual
James Franco likes everyone to know that he's really smart and that he's very focused on his studies. That's why he does things like tweeting pics of his book shelf. Is that a copy of The Alchemist?
Sequel!
Patti Smith is working on another memoir, a follow-up to her National Book Award winning Just Kids about her time running around New York City with Robert Mapplethorpe. She's is also working on a mystery novel. You know what this means: tour stories! [NBC]
Kamis, 24 Maret 2011
Making a statement
Sculpture in front of the New York Public Library, made from 25,000 classic Dr Suess Books.
Kamis, 17 Maret 2011
Link Love!
What a show! Tina Fey and Steve Martin start a joint book tour! Steve may need some back up after his last book reading was called "boring" and fans were offered a refund.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
With Jane Eyre out soon and Wuthering Heights on its way later in the year The Daily Beast pit Bronte sister against Bronte sister.
Michael Chabon and his wife, author Ayelet Waldman, have set up an offbeat drama project at HBO that revolves around a motley group of conmen and magicians who use their skills at deception to battle Hitler and his forces during WWII. (Variety)
The second coming of Ted Danson continues, in breaks between filming Bored to Death he's co-written a book, Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them, "a nonfiction study based on his long-standing interest and concern for our oceans."
(Vulture)
Selasa, 15 Maret 2011
Up in the clouds.
InformationIsBeautiful.net (a site dedicated to visualising information) combined a whole lot of "best lists" to make this:
Senin, 14 Maret 2011
More genius from Esquire
UK Esquire celebrate their 20th birthday this month. In honour of this achievement, they decided they needed 20 different covers. The April covers (out now in the UK) have been designed by 20 over-achievers including Michael Stipe, Matt Groening and Ricky Gervais. A sample below but they're releasing a new one every few days over at Esquire.co.uk
Mat Groening
Michael Stipe
Documentary photographer and photojournalist Martin Parr
Award-winning illustrator, designer and long-time Esquire contributor Noma Bar
Ricky Gervais
The reader: Jacqueline Maley
Jac Maley was my first new friend at Fairfax (now FBFF) and I went totally top shelf with my selection. Jac writes the political sketch comedy column Under the Flag in The Sydney Morning Herald and therefore has the most impressive job title of anyone I know. She is a kindred spirit who, just like me, enjoys communicating soley by Google images, watching low rent reality TV and feeling good about the Obamas. Sadly, she has just moved to Canberra to be closer to the political action but the free time that living there provides means she got time to write down her three favourite books for me.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
"I read this at university, quite late really, and was confronted with a heroine who was completely unique, the sort of woman I had never seen fictionalised before, and yet whose inner life was instantly recognisable to me. She became a fiction-friend (you know, those characters in fiction who give you comfort and succour like actual real life friends)
It is a love story, yes, but it is also a story of survival and loneliness, the intense passions that lie hidden under the skin, the beauty and importance of personal freedom and how intregrity comes only through being true to your own values. The closest thing I have ever done to a pilgrimage was to the Haworth Parsonage in Yorkshire, where the Brontes spent their lives. I wandered the moors in the dark eerie light of the afternoon and tried to channel Jane and Cathy."
Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky
"I am a little obsessed with Irene Nemirovsky and her tragic story. The fact that her work has been re-discovered all these years after she was murdered by the Nazis seems to me such a beautiful affirmation of the power of literature.
This book is a small but perfectly formed one, set in the gossipy peasanty surroundings of a French village. Its theme is youth versus age, and the fact that young people run around blinded by passion, falling in and out of love, wreaking havoc and carrying out random emotional assaults on eachother. As you age, the drive to do all this falls away, but so does life. I love this theme. I also wonder how true it is, and you can tell Nemirovsky does too.
Once I interviewed Clive James (that clanging noise you hear is the sound of a name being dropped) in his Southbank apartment in London. I was recovering from a badly broken heart. Over croissants and cigarillos (truly), he told me that the love thing never gets easier. Whether you're 16 or 60, love happens. Your heart can still swoon and it can still hurt.
I still can't decide whether that is depressing or heartening."
Broken April by Ismail Kadare
"My grandma (whose taste in all things is impeccable and who I want to be like when I grow up) introduced me to Kadare. This book is about an Albanian blood feud and taught me fascinating historical and cultural things about Balkan history wot I didn't know before.
The writing style is sparse and bleak, and the loneliness and brutality of the countryside pervades the whole book, creating an incredible atmosphere. In anyone else's hands, the subject matter would turn to melodrama, but Kadare is so skilful, he gives his readers something universal. But he's not always such a Serious Sam: he also writes satire!
(The File on H, 1990)"
Runaway OR INDEED ANYTHING EVER WRITTEN by Alice Munro
"Okay, now I'm at four books. See? This is too hard. But I couldn't not include Munro. For my money she's the best writer working today. Her themes are simple and pure, she only writes short stories, and she chronicles the small lives of Canadian country-folk. Often nothing important happens in her stories, and yet all of life is there, in every one of them. I cannot for the life of me work out how she does it. She is compulsively readable and utterly brilliant."
(Caveat: "these books are not necessarily my favest-of-all-time-full-stop. I could never commit to something so fixed! But they are ones that have stayed with me, and will always".)
Sabtu, 12 Maret 2011
January wants an Oscar
January Jones has been shopping. And beyond the usual things one needs to maintain absolute physical perfection she's also picked up an option on the first three books (Heartsick, Sweetheart, and Evil at Heart) of author Chelsea Cain’s Gretchen Lowell series. She is interested in playing Lowell, the serial killer protagonist of the series. Read: she wants to get ugly and make some Oscar-bait.
Quick read: The Lover's Dictionary
The quote by Brendan Cowell on the cover ("this book made me want to fall in love again") was enough to make me reconsider my purchase but I pushed on. Mostly because the author had me from the first few lines I read in the book store and also because I was grumpy and anxious and wanted something simple. This looked like it was going to be easier to digest than a copy of Who Weekly and a bowl of All Bran.
In this state of mind a book like David Levithan's The Lover's Dictionary should probably have fallen somewhere between making me feel absolutely infuriated and (at best) somewhat smug. But it had another effect altogether. Part novella part long, ambling hispter love poem it cured my grim, self indulgent mood and took all the bad away.
The bumbling and totally adorable male narrator describes his deep, confusing and abiding love for his girlfriend in short paragraphs under headings in alphabetical order (it will only take you an hour or so to read). Levithan's writing is so pretty and heartfelt that more than once I had to remind myself that it really was the male character narrating the story and not the woman. It was so much more than just All Bran. It is a lovely weekend sugar hit. A rose flavoured macaroon of a book. Here's a taste...
bolster, v
I am very careful whenever I know you are the phone to your father. I know you'll come to me eventually and we'll talk through it. But I have to wait. In the meantime I'm careful what songs I play. I try to speak to you with my selections
Highly cynical people or people in highly cynical moods may not like this book. But I loved it so much I bought two more copies of it today because I want to send them to my friends.
Selasa, 01 Maret 2011
Kawaii!
Momiji dolls now come with glasses. This is an advancement I am genuinely excited about. Each character comes with a preordained favourite genre of fiction and a badge that says “I ♥ Books”. It goes without saying that they all have exceptional taste.
Step by step
Like most celebrities Filmmaker Spike Lee and his hot wife Tonya Lewis Lee have written a picture book, it's called Giant Steps to Change the World and it's an inspirational story about activism. Well of course it is!
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)