A Different Stripe

Catch-all for 8.4.09

Our blowout summer sale is still on. Book groupings discounted 40%, individual books discounted 25%. 

You know what books are part of that sale? The two John Williams books we publish: Everybody's favorite story about a depressed academic, Stoner, along with Sam Mendes's favorite Western, Butcher's Crossing. At The Quarterly Conversation, Scott Bryan Wilson explains why the books are "impossible to put down." And, as part of the National Book Foundation's countdown of the 77 fiction winners of the National Book Award, Harold Augenbraum discusses Williams's Augustus.

Morte D'Urban won the National Book Award in 1963, and both Joshua Ferris and Fiona Maazel discuss it at that very same NBA Fiction blog.

All right, we have no real idea if Butcher's Crossing is Sam Mendes's favorite Western or not, but we do know that he'll be producing a film adaptation of it as part of a new deal he's made with Focus Features.

Other recent books you can pick up on the cheap for a bit longer: Sylvia Townsend Warner's romantic, beautiful, enthralling lesbian love story set during the French revolution of 1848, Summer Will Show, and our two Elaine Dundy novels, including her roman-à-clef follow-up to The Dud Avocado, The Old Man and Me.

A High Wind in Jamaica is not part of the sale, but Andrew Sean Greer thinks you must read it anyway, listen to the story on NPR here.

According to Jesse Kornbluth (aka The Head Butler) you must also read James Thurber's 13 Clocks.

James Wood really did play the bongos in honor of Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives. Peter Terzian must be a very persuasive man.

Before Esperanza Spalding was singing to Barack Obama at the White House, she was singing the praises of The Summer Book.

The Recent production of a theatrical adaptation of Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate as part of the Lincoln Center got the Post's Elisabeth Vincentelli thinking about the source material. If anyone knows if the play is traveling, please get in touch with us.

The philosophy of Pinocchio.

Christopher Byrd explains How Platonov Can Change Your Life (very little collectivization required) at the always-delightful BN Review.

Catch-all for 6.18.09

Geoffrey Brock, who translated our edition of Pinocchio, is reading from his new book of poetry, Weighing Light this Saturday at the Barnes and Noble in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Watch his animated poem "And Day Brought Back My Night," at once funny and heartbreaking.

Unless you can answer "yes" to this quiz, you probably shouldn't be writing any more Moomin stories.

The Persephone Post is the kind of publisher's blog we can get behind. And The Year in Pictures is just what a gallerist's blog should be.

Embroidered book covers, the next biggish thing? Some conceptual Jane Austen covers [via Jacket Copy] by Leigh-Anne Mullock and Shopping in Marrakech, hand stitched by Jessica Hische.

Keep checking this space for dates and information about Larry Korn's west-coast One-Straw Revolution tour.

We started a NYRB Classics Flickr page and group. Stop by, gawk, and contribute photos featuring our books to the pool.

The animated version of My Dog Tulip  (with voicework by Christopher Plummer, Isabella Rossellini, Lynn Redgrave and others) has been screening at the Annecy Festival of animated films. Let's hope it finds a distributor so we can see it for ourselves.

Catch All: Post-Inauguration edition

 

more "arethaized" photos can be seen here

Luba Lukova, the artist responsible for the cover image on the forthcoming  One-Straw Revolution, had a poster selected for the Manifest Hope exhibit in DC over inauguration weekend.

A table at McNally Jackson in Manhattan is sporting a collection of books that influenced the president and will be hosting a panel discussing his intellectual education on February 13.

Is Gitmo closed yet?

The new WhiteHouse.gov site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license!

The Gaspereau Press—which always has the most beautiful catalogues and printed books around—now has a blog. Recommended if you're interested in the workings of fine book printing.

"How, in just a few pages, does a writer earn our trust, and her characters our allegience?" Mark Doty reviews Olivia Manning's School for Love in Oprah magazine.

Mavis Gallant and Jhumpa Lahiri share a stage at the Village Voice Bookshop (which is not located anywhere you might find boxes dispensing free Village Voices, but in Paris) on February 19th. Lahiri is currently working on a selection of uncollected stories by Mavis Gallant, to come out next fall.

Catch-all for 11.26.08

Have we mentioned that we think you should Buy Books for the Holidays? The proprietors of said site are taking bookstore nominations, so we nominate Three Lives and Company, where we intend to spend some time and money this month.

We're pleased to be in such esteemed company here and here.

From Ready Steady Blog (via the Literary Saloon) comes word that Juan Goytisolo (who wrote the introduction to The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes) has won Spain's National Prize for Literature.

Endorsement most gratefully accepted.

The Hound Blog has a roundup of Cosa Nostra books, including a short discussion of The Moro Affair and a recommendation of other books by Leonardo Sciascia. Says the Hound, "Sciascia has also written many excellent novels concerning Sicilian crime . . . I'd say The Day Of The Owl, The Wine Dark Sea and Equal Danger are mandatory reading for fans of genre fiction. Or just plain old great books."

Unexpected book recommendations: As a child, Michael Crichton adored James Thurber's 13 Clocks;  Barack Obama recently told the Argentine president that he was fond of Borges—take that, Karl Rove!—and Julio Cortazar.

The current issue of the International Literary Quarterly includes an essay by Amit Chaudhuri on money, by which he means "not markets, capital, financial gain or material success, but, specifically, the individual bank note and small change."

Gary Indiana (who wrote the introduction to our soon-to-be-published edition of Henry de Montherlant's Chaos and Night) is profiled in "The Elements of Bile."

Let's petition the USPS to issue a Snowy Day postage stamp in honor of the 50th anniversary of Ezra Jack Keats's classic. 

You totally called it: Judge this Book by Its Cover.

Something about Thanksgiving makes us appreciate homegrown humor that we might not otherwise have the stomach for, so here are Thanksgiving treats from Charles Schultz and Garrison Keillor.

Early holiday gift catch-all

Some suggestions for a big-box free December:

Yes, we're independent, so you can buy books from us without breaking any of those pledges you've made. We have a whole bunch of Classics for kids and adults at very nice discounts. And we've just introduced a nifty, colorful new NYRB Classics tote bag. If you spend more than $75, you get one for free. The bags are also available for under $10.

Books on the Nightstand has just begun a gift ideas round up. They link to Librarything, not to a store, but searching for a book at Indiebound will point to a local bookseller who stocks it. Indiebound has also introduced a wishlist function, anyone try it yet?

The handmade pledge was set up by a consortium of crafty groups and publishers like Etsy, Craft  magazine, Interweave, and Design Sponge to encourage people to make holiday gifts, or to buy them from micro-producers. Etsy also has a local seller index. Enter the name of a town, and up pop producers in that area. Similar human-made gifts can be found at The Renegade Craft Fair, which holds several events around the country, as do Bazaar Bizarre and Maker Faire.

Our favorite holiday fair is the Small and Independent press fair in Manhattan. Every year the participating presses seem ever more diverse and interesting (if not for last year's fair, we wouldn't have known about Mark Batty publishers, for instance), and the speakers and events more impressive. This year the fair is being held on December 6th and 7th. Come say hello to staff members who should probably keep their days jobs and pick up some bargains.

Catch all for 10.6.08

John Self's review of Monsieur Monde Vanishes sparks a debate about which of Simenon's thousands of books to read next.

Terry Teachout makes us wish we were in Chicago to see this revival of Karel Capek's R.U.R. (which introduced the word "robot" to the world): "Strawdog's R.U.R. is a major revival of a play that turns out to be far more than a mere historical curiosity."

Farewell to The Sun and to the profane and wonderful enotes book blog. Someone hire Ben Lytal and Shane Mehling right this minute!

John Collier—just like Ray Bradbury, but "witty and sardonic and mean." Right on Ken Jennings! looks like you're not such a dummy after all.

I09 declares The Anatomy of Melancholy one of "The Longest Science Fiction Books of All Time." Never thought of it that way, but we'll buy that it "was the template for much experimentation in early speculative fiction" and that "Burton's analysis of his own mind and body was revolutionary in itself, connecting science directly with fiction."

If you're looking for a fictional pub crawl, you might want to start with The Midnight Bell, where much of the action of Patrick Hamilton's boozy Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky takes place.

Fort Greene may be the site of Brooklyn's next independent bookstore. Please write to Jessica or Rebecca with offers of retail space or cold hard cash.

What is Colin Firth reading...?

NYRB Classics: bringing together literate waitresses and "Victor Serge fanboys" since the other week. Also: how the predicaments of Soviet agents mirror that of politicians in St. Louis.

Susan Bernofsky (you may know her as Robert Walser's translator and soon-to-be biographer) has a blog.

Catch all for 6.11.08

The Family Mashber (called "a Yiddish masterpiece" by Cynthia Ozick) is the book of the month at  Ready Steady Book, which is run by the editor of  The Book Depository (an on-line bookseller that offers free international shipping).

Macy Halford at The New Yorker blog Bookbench, roots for "a movie version of [The Dud] Avocado: in addition to being entertaining, it’s a smart read."

Philip Roth's never-sent response to Diana Trilling's review of Portnoy's complaint—which we mentioned last week in connection to Ackerley's My Father and Myself—is posted on the Harper's blog. Wyatt Mason claims that the letter, "with clarity and rigor, succeeds at dismantling the credibility of Trilling’s case."

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson will be the the August 7 and 20 book club selection at Edmonds Bookshop in Edmonds, Washington.

There's now a Library Thing NYRB group—and we didn't even start it ourselves, the enterprising "Marensr" did.

Catch all for 2.14.08

Take back Valentine's Day!: "Cut out a paper heart, mount it on a doily, make a collage, and mail it to someone you like." (from A Brief Message, a site that airs the opinions of designers in 200 words or less)

And then make sure that what you've taken back is cruelty free, fair trade, and organic (listen to Democracy Now's Valentine Day Special on corruption among cocoa growers and diamond traders)

Read a love story, but bear in mind:

"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims—these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name."

(From Jeffrey Eugenides' introduction to his collection of love stories, My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead which includes Eileen Chang's "Red Rose, White Rose," also found in her Love in a Fallen City. Don't know what unrequited love has to do with encouraging kids to write, but the book raises funds for 826 Chicago.)

Boycott Valentine's Day and celebrate Vallotton's Day along with Zyzzvya's blog and Félix Fénéon, who illustrates Mr. Eugenides' point again and again in his capsule "novels":

Matters of the heart. M. Simon, a café owner in Verquin, township of Béthune, married and the father of three, committed suicide.

Prematurely jealous, J. Boulon, of Parc-Saint-Maur, pumped a revolver shot in the thigh of his fiancée, Germaine S.

Discover a love that dares speak its name: that of a little girl for a demure black resident of Greenwich Village.

This picture is offered up by a Princess Latifah at the Datalounge who describes herself as still wanting "a jewel encrusted nose-flute" (like the one the Persian Madame Butterfly has) and says:

"Here's Miss Jenny in all her feline hotness. Is it any wonder a little, gay African-American girl fell in love with this beautiful creature?"

(Thanks Fran, for bringing this to our attention)

 

Catch all for 1.29.08

Did anybody else catch TMC's showing (and Martha Stewart's selection) of the 1935 film version of The Enchanted April? It was true to the book and much better than expected, at least it was until the over-long scene in which the wacky Italian villa staff fly into a tizzy over an Englishman's desire to have a hot bath. Says the Englishman indignantly: "I am convinced that a bath in Italy is somewhere between a public function and an eruption of Vesuvius!"

The Written Nerd has won a special small-business grant from The Brooklyn Public Library and may soon be opening a small bookstore, possibly in one of the underserved but literate neighborhoods of Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, or Prospect Heights.

The Wall St. Journal pays attention to the high-profile bookstore-rescue trend in a piece called "Who's Buying the Bookstore." Mentioned is Classics-friendly shop The Community Bookstore.

The most recent Longitude Bookstore newsletter reminds us to note the passing of George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman novels. Closer to home, Fraser wrote the introduction to the NYRB Classics edition of The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Vladimir Sorokin's novel Day of the Oprichnik has been parodied as Day of the Honours Student by a Putin Satirist popularly known as Mr. Parker. Unfortunately, all further information is in Russian, and so unreadable to us here. [via]

The Guardian rounds up the best bookstores in the world, including one in the Netherlands converted from an unused cathedral that it calls a candidate for "most beautiful bookstore of all time."

Our last.fm Classics group membership drive has netted three new members so far. Welcome to you all.

Catch-All for 12.14.2007

• You may have already heard about this, but writer Luc Sante has a blog called  Pinakothek (Greek for "gallery"). The format is simple and wonderfully  addictive: for each post, he chooses an image and writes briefly about it. Sante wrote the introduction, and translated, Novels in Three Lines , which also has pictures and was recently named one of Slate's best books of 2007.

• If the YouTube clip of the Espresso book machine from the On the Media post left you feeling a little cold, then shiver no more: here is the Heidelberg windmill platen letterpress. While the Heidleberg appears to be printing an invitation, not a book,  the sound of the gears whirring is a nice reminder of publishing's fine tradition.