Books
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Mexico's Spoiled Rich Kids17 June 2013, 12:17 pm
The entitled children of the country's elite are now coming under fire....
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A Scottish Portrait to Lose Your Head Over15 June 2013, 11:00 pm
Two hundred objects relating to the 16th-century Catholic ruler Mary Queen of Scots, beheaded at the behest of her Protestant cousin Queen Elizabeth I, will be at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh from June 28 until Nov. 17....
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Weekend Confidential: Anne-Marie Slaughter15 June 2013, 5:37 pm
The former diplomat on her new job at the New America Foundation, doing business in D.C. and why men don't have it all, either....
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Diminutive Dads of Animal Kingdom15 June 2013, 5:32 pm
Among many species, fathers are much smaller—and they don't always survive the act of mating, writes Daphne Fairbairn....
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Wordsworth, the Child Psychologist15 June 2013, 3:14 am
Alison Gopnik on the insights of poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy into child development....
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Flower Power15 June 2013, 3:10 am
Newly restored and reproduced, "The Green Florilegium" shows off the work of 17th-century flower painter Hans Simon Hotzbecker....
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Statshot: Carl Bialik, 'The Numbers Guy'15 June 2013, 3:05 am
In this Statshot column: NSA surveillance, Twitter typos and the U.S. Open....
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The Violent Femmes' Call to Rebellion15 June 2013, 2:10 am
Clay Shirky, who writes and teaches about the Internet's effects on society, on how an edgy, underproduced band of the 1980s showed how to ignore the weight of tradition....
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Must-See Art Exhibitions: June 15-2115 June 2013, 2:07 am
In this column: the tsars' decorative objects, Giotto in Paris and Winslow Homer in New England....
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Gambling Mogul James Murren on His Art Collection15 June 2013, 2:00 am
Among the artists discussed: James Turrell, Maya Lin and Ellsworth Kelly....
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Mirrors, Mirrors on the Walls of Art Basel15 June 2013, 1:54 am
Mirrored objects—from silvery faux fireplaces and staircases to looking-glass panels smashed into kaleidoscopic fragments—are selling big at Art Basel, the Swiss contemporary art fair that closes Sunday. A visit....
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Prized Fighter15 June 2013, 12:56 am
"Boxer at Rest," now on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of the few works of Western art that depicts the impossibility of redemption....
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Sally Gardner wins the 2013 Carnegie Medal19 June 2013, 12:01 pm
Sally Gardner wins the prestigious CILIP Carnegie Medal with dystopian tale Maggot Moon, while illustrator Levi Pinfoldclaims the Kate Greenaway Medal ...
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Sally Gardner: The prize winner once branded 'unteachable'19 June 2013, 12:00 pm
Sally Gardner, who has won the Carnegie Medal for Maggot Moon, on why she sees her dyslexia as a gift. ...
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Central Saint Martins tutor's mission to make book debut via crowdsourcing19 June 2013, 10:30 am
Respected illustrator and Central Saint Martins tutor Howard Tangye will see his work published for the first time if a Kickstarter.com campaign can raise £30,000. ...
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Garfield: happy 35th birthday to a funny cat19 June 2013, 6:15 am
The world's most recognisable comic-strip cat was launched today in 1978 by Jim Davis. Here are some of his finest quotes. ...
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Warwick Prize for Writing 2013: longlist announced19 June 2013, 6:00 am
Julian Barnes, Jonathan Frantzen and Thomas Keneally are in contention for £25,000 biennial book award. ...
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Honest sex scenes in books will stop teens learning from porn, Malorie Blackman says19 June 2013, 6:00 am
Books for teenagers should contain realistic scenes about sex to prevent young people learning everything from online pornography, the new children's laureate has argued. ...
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William Friedkin interview: 'You don't need to know about my sexual liaisons'18 June 2013, 11:30 am
William Friedkin, director of The French Connection and The Exorcist, tells Sean Macaulay about his action-packed life. ...
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William Friedkin interview: 'You don't need to know about my sexual liasons'18 June 2013, 11:30 am
William Friedkin, director of The French Connection and The Exorcist, tells Sean Macaulay about his action-packed life. ...
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Read For My School scheme is a winner18 June 2013, 11:20 am
Winners of competition encouraging 100,000 English school pupils to read more than 400,000 books announced. ...
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Samar Yazbek: "Syrians refuse to remain slaves to the Assad regime"18 June 2013, 10:00 am
The Syrian author and journalist describes how she sees the situation in Syria. ...
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Rowan Williams and Neil MacGregor discuss faith and the visual imagination18 June 2013, 6:00 am
The former Archbishop of Canterbury and the director of the British Museum discuss religious imagery. ...
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Derren Brown on the best cafés for bookworms17 June 2013, 11:15 am
The illusionist shares his favourite places to hide away with a pot of tea and a good book. ...
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50 Lost Manuscripts From Famous Authors19 June 2013, 12:34 pm
For the Bard, it was fire; for Hem, a careless wife; for Kerouac, the dog. Here, 50 tales of domestic drama, romantic rage and political......
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Dean Norris Says Nothing About 'Breaking Bad,' For Fear Of Bodily Harm19 June 2013, 9:15 am
Dean Norris dropped by "Jimmy Kimmel Live," but he didn't offer up any juicy details about the new season of "Breaking Bad." As he explained......
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Wild River Review: Of Protests and Fruit: A Report and Update From Istanbul18 June 2013, 10:48 pm
In the nearly thirty years since I've been traveling to Turkey, I've seen the country emerge from a military dictatorship and a harsh penal system into an economic and cultural success vying for entry into the European Union....
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Howard G. Buffett: My 40 Chances18 June 2013, 10:32 pm
Each of us has about 40 chances to accomplish our goals in life. I learned this first through agriculture, because all farmers can expect to have about 40 growing seasons. But I had an "aha moment" when I realized that this applies not just to farmers like me but to all of us....
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Frank Swain: 11 Reasons That Zombies Are Real18 June 2013, 8:17 pm
Frank Swain is the author of How To Make A Zombie: The Real Life (and Death) Science of Reanimation and Mind Control ($15.95, Oneworld) You......
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Qasim Rashid: The Book That Killed Terrorism18 June 2013, 5:35 pm
The Wrong Kind of Muslim fights back and says enough is enough. This book is a call to unite those of all faiths and of no faith to conquer the common enemy that is oppression of conscience -- to conquer terrorism....
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PHOTO: Suicide-Themed Fashion Spread Criticized, Pulled18 June 2013, 5:14 pm
Vice is no stranger to controversy -- in fact, the brand prides itself on courting that very beast. In its recently released Summer Fiction Issue,......
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This Week's Bestselling eBooks18 June 2013, 5:11 pm
Every week, Digital Book World compiles an ebooks bestseller list (here's their methodology). This week, Dan Brown stays top but Abbi Glines's self-published book is......
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Geri Spieler: Waiting 90 Days for Imminent Death18 June 2013, 4:27 pm
humanitarian worker Jessica Buchanan endured this reality of imminent death during her three-month kidnapping by Somali pirates. Her book describes in amazing detail, day by day, minute by minute, her horrific ordeal....
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Nicholas Mennuti: My Thriller About The NSA Is Coming True18 June 2013, 4:27 pm
I've always been attracted to thrillers because they allow you to discuss current affairs without the risk of sliding into didacticism....
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Scott Porch: Hot in Hollywood: Producer Lynda Obst on Tentpoles, Tadpoles and TV18 June 2013, 4:26 pm
Film producer Lynda Obst's career has had more twists and turns than a big-budget action movie -- which is not the sort of movie she makes....
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This Is How Fabio Spends His Free Time18 June 2013, 4:26 pm
What do you do when you've already conquered the world of romance novel covers, the world of butter believability, and the world of roller-coaster bird......
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Book News: Suicide as Style, Skyjacker Profiles19 June 2013, 2:34 pm
The North Korean watchdog news site New Focus International has reported that Kim Jong-un gave copies of “Mein Kampf” to high-ranking officials in honor of his birthday in January.
The pianist Jeremy Denk has signed a deal for a book based on his article “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” which appeared in the April 8th issue of The New Yorker.
Ira Silverberg is stepping down from his position as director of literature programs at the National Endowment for the Arts.
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The Ongoing Story: Twitter and Writing18 June 2013, 4:44 pm
I was in the Time magazine archives recently, doing research for my biography of J. D. Salinger, when I pulled open a drawer and found a small box containing a bunch of discarded typewriter heads for the I.B.M. Selectric typewriter—the cutting-edge writing technology of my youth. I had written, or tried to write, my first stories while sitting before this ominously humming machine. At its center was a typeball—like a golf ball with letters—that leapt up to punch each letter ...
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Book News: Blumesday and Bloomsday, Pynchon in New York18 June 2013, 3:21 pm
Yesterday was Blumesday, an annual holiday held in honor of Judy Blume. (Bloomsday, the annual celebration of “Ulysses,” was on Sunday).
The words “tweet” and “crowdsourcing” have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Oliver Pötzsch has become Amazon Publishing’s first author to sell a million copies.
Researchers in Germany are developing a controversial new technology that seeks to prevent e-book piracy by altering a story̵...
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The Company They Kept17 June 2013, 6:28 pm
The following essay is drawn from the introduction to a new edition of Mary McCarthy’s novel, “The Oasis,” which will be published by Melville House on June 18th.When my friends and I were in our twenties in the 1950s, we read two writers—Colette and Mary McCarthy—as others read the Bible: to learn better who we were and how, given the constraint of our condition, we were to live. Their novels and stories, collectively speaking, constituted our Book of Wisdom.The co...
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This Week in Fiction: Thomas McGuane17 June 2013, 5:00 am
Your story in this week’s issue, “Stars,” which is set in Montana, begins with a scene in which your protagonist, an astronomer named Jessica, confronts a man who has trapped and is about to shoot a wolf. Jessica argues that the wolf stands for everything she loves in the wild; the man counters that he has legitimate plans to use the wolf—making a rug out of its hide, and so on—and that the wolf wouldn’t show her the same mercy she wants to show it. What ma...
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Book News: Social-Media Sabbatical, Big Data17 June 2013, 5:00 am
Neil Gaiman has announced that he will take a social-media “sabbatical.”
Nona Willis Aronowitz, the daughter of Ellen Willis, on growing up as the only child of writerly parents. (Rebecca Mead writes about the ongoing debate about motherhood, writing, and family size.)
In the Financial Times, John Sunyer on the Stanford professor Franco Moretti’s “Literary Lab” and the movement to study literature using “big data.” (Moretti’s collection ...
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Writers and the Optimal-Child-Count Spectrum14 June 2013, 6:50 pm
Lauren Sandler, the author of “One and Only,” a new book about only children, published an essay on the Web site of The Atlantic last week remarking on the fact that many of the female writers she most admires—Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Hardwick, Ellen Willis—all had only one child. In the article, which was bait-titled “The Secret to Being Both a Successful Writer and a Mother: Have Just One Kid,” Sandler articulated a distinction b...
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Book News: Auden’s Diary, Brando’s Afterlife14 June 2013, 3:14 pm
The Egyptian writer Karam Saber has been sentenced to five years in prison for a short-story collection titled “Where Is God?”
Excerpts from W. H. Auden’s long-lost diary, which was auctioned off at Christie’s for seventy-four thousand dollars.
New research suggests that reading literary fiction makes one more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.
“Once we associate a face with a book, we are more likely to remember that book. But we are also m...
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Odessa: City of Writerly Love13 June 2013, 9:35 pm
Walking along Pushkin Street on the kind of dazzling spring day the Odessan writer Aleksandr Kuprin warned visitors to avoid—the smell of acacias in bloom, he wrote, can induce newcomers to fall in love and take foolish steps, like getting married—I crossed Bunin Street, named for the Nobel Prize-winning short-story writer, then Zhukovskogo, a street named after the romantic poet said to have been Pushkin’s mentor. Near the opera, a golden sign announced the Odessa Literary M...
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Book News: Motherly Writers, Shakespeare in Space13 June 2013, 4:21 pm
“The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.” Zadie Smith weighs in on the idea that having no more than one child is the secret to success for female writers.
NPR on the decline in the difficulty of books assigned to high schoolers.
The Turkish writer Elif Shafak finds humor and hope at the Gezi Park protests. (Also, read Orhan Pamuk on his memories of Taksim Square.)
Ten literary-themed restaurants.
Recent issues of the m...
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Three Beards12 June 2013, 10:16 pm
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In my life I have grown three beards, covering many of my adult faces. My present hairiness is monumental, and I intend to carry it into the grave. (I must avoid chemotherapy.) A woman has instigated each beard, the original bush requested by my first wife, Kirby. Why did she want it? Maybe she was tired of the same old face. Or maybe she thought a beard would be raffish; I did. In the fifties, no one wore beards. In Eisenhower’s day, as in the time of the Founding Fathers, all chin...
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Born Again12 June 2013, 2:01 pm
After receiving a hundred of his letters, meeting him fifteen times, either at his apartment on Bilu Street or at a Tel Aviv café, and receiving too many calls from his cell phone to ever hope to return, I gave up trying to count the number of times that Yoram Kaniuk had died. For a while, after the first letter I received from him, in 2010, I’d kept track: He used to say that in 1941, he was killed by the Einsatzgruppen in Ternopil, Ukraine, even though he was eleven at the time, and...
