We recently discovered something we didn’t know about the Steig Larsson books — that he modeled his introverted computer hacker protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, on childhood favorite Pippi Longstocking. When delivering his Millenium series to his publisher, Larsson wrote, “My point of departure was what Pippi Longstocking would be like as an adult. Would she be called a sociopath because she looked upon society in a different way and has no social competence?” Well maybe, but we have to agree with Slate‘s analysis that cheery, delightfully odd Pippi Longstocking is not a believable younger version of the tough-as-nails Lisbeth Salander. Nevertheless, the idea got us to thinking about other literary legacies, and whether any of our favorite young characters might have grown up into other, older literary figures that we know and love. Click through to check out the pairs that we came up with, and let us know who you think would grow up to be who in the comments.
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NaNoWriMo may be over and our schedules may be filling up with holiday parties and family visits, but despite all that, December is one of our favorite months to curl up and read. If you need a little extra inspiration in this most hectic of months, however, never fear. To spur you on, we’ve collected a few inspiring quotes about reading by some people who read quite a lot — the authors themselves. Click through to read forty of our favorite quotes from writers about books and reading, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your own favorite inspirational declarations in the comments! Read More »
Today at Flavorpill, we looked at some Ryan Gosling-approved decorating ideas for our apartment. We wondered if it would be more pleasant to work in a fancy shed than a cubicle. We couldn’t decide which we found more confusing: the fact that Hanson is possibly launching their own beer or that the littlest brother is now a dead ringer for Wayne Coyne. We loved today’s Google Doodle, an illustration inspired by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in honor of Mark Twain’s 176th birthday. We were glad not to be Aung Zaw Oo’s body. We tried to imagine why anyone would want to own a set of Hitler’s swastika-emblazoned sheets. We agreed with author Karen Russell that Bill Murray would make a good Chief Bigtree in the forthcoming TV adaptation of Swamplandia!. We were happy to see that hi-res versions of John James Audubon’s pretty bird pictures are now online thanks to the University of Pittsburgh. And finally, we watched an amazing time-lapse video of the construction of the incredible Maurizio Cattelan retrospective that’s currently up at the Guggenheim. We’re curious how long it’s going to take to bring it all down when the show closes in January.
There’s nothing like a well-stocked library to enhance a home. Especially when that library has been outfitted with books chosen by some of the choosiest readers of all — the authors themselves. We recently caught a peek at the literary collections of a few contemporary novelists in Leah Price’s excellent and newly released Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books, but we admit that our library-lust wasn’t quite sated, and we had to go hunting for more. We’ve already shown you a choice selection of the libraries of the rich and famous, but here, inspired by Price’s book, we’re focusing on the libraries, studies, and carefully organized bookshelves of the authors themselves. Click through to see a few snapshots of the libraries of famous authors, and let us know which ones inspire you to curl up and read in the comments. Read More »
Imagine a grain of rice — picture its width and height. Now, imagine an art installation that consists of penning book chapters word by word on the über-tiny grains. New York City-based artist Trong G. Nguyen took on this incredibly ambitious endeavor to honor literary greats in a series entitled Library, for which he hand-writes an inconceivable amount of words on rice using a fine-point technical pen — sans magnifying glass. Although the project took off back in 2007, Nguyen has continued to expand on it, recreating the words of writers such as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Roland Barthes.
“Several years ago, I decided to write the entirety of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time word for word on grains of rice – about 1.5 million words, ” Nguyen explained in an interview with AHAlife. “The intent is to house all the grains of my ‘translation’ in a single, giant hourglass, where the rice kernels replace grains of sand. This project will take at least a few more years to complete. In the meantime, I decided to do smaller versions of this project by writing singular chapters or complete texts from shorter works, usually of books in my own library. A collector friend subsequently commissioned me to do the first chapters of his seven favorite books, and that’s how the project’s evolved.”
Check out Nguyen’s artistic ode to literature below and learn more about his work over at his website. Read More »
Yesterday, Stephen King’s newest work, 11/22/63, a novel about a man who travels back in time via a storeroom to stop the JFK assassination, hit shelves. Inspired by this newest addition to the time travel literature genre, we got to thinking about a few of our favorite time travel stories, and particularly about all of the different ways those fictional mortals manage to thrust themselves back and forth in space-time. From our vantage, there are a few types of time travel that we see used over and over again: mechanical (time machines and the like), portal-based (stepping through some sort of floating hole in the space-time continuum), fantastical (ghosts or other unbelievable phenomena), magical/item-based (some sort of artifact that holds the power of time travel), and the simply unexplained (because why does it matter? Get to the cool future stuff already). There are hundreds of novels and short stories about or involving time travel, so these are a few of our favorites, plucked both from the beginnings of the genre and from contemporary literature. Click through to read our list, and let us know your own favorite time travel novels — or time travel methods — in the comments. Read More »
Happy Banned Books Week! Today marks the first day of America’s annual celebration of the freedom to read whatever we please, whether it be quality literature, soapy nonsense, or something in between. In accordance with the celebrations, earlier this week the trustees of the Charlton Public Library in Massachusetts lifted a century-old ban on Mark Twain’s mildly racy (nude illustrations!) short story entitled Eve’s Diary, causing Twain to write scornfully in a letter that “nobody attaches weight to the freaks of the Charlton Library.” He also wrote, ”the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn’t anger me”. That may be, but we think the decision to repeal the ban on his book would delight him nonetheless. The library tucked two copies onto their shelves this week, and they were — of course — immediately snatched up by patrons.
[via Reuters]
Tony D’Souza is the author of Mule, a new novel about a down-on-his-luck journalist who smuggles pot from California to Florida in order to raise some much-needed cash. We asked him to curate a list of ten books about road trips that influenced him while he was writing his novel, which comes out next week. He writes, “Pushing myself to look past the most obvious choices like On The Road or Travels With Charley, I saw how long and deep the roots of the road trip are in our cultural memory.” He continues, “The characters in each of these books becomes changed by the journeys they make in profound ways, in the same the sorts of ways any of us are when we make a long and taxing journey. The road trip becomes both bath and baptism, purging us of our old thoughts and preparing us to experience something new.” So read on, dear readers, and tell us your favorite books that feature a life-changing road trip.
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Yesterday, we read on NPR about tweets from deceased writers and it got us thinking about the various authors and poets who have been resurrected in order to dole out advice, complaints, and fleeting thoughts in 140 characters or less. What could Melville tell us about whaling? (Too much, we think.) What’s happening with Flannery O’Connor’s peacock? And what has Sylvia Plath been dreaming about?
Some of these accounts are from fans, and others are by writers either as publicity stunts for their upcoming books or as a release from the work they’ve been doing all day. Inhabiting the voice of an esteemed writer is a challenge, and so it takes a certain amount of boldness to accept the task at hand. We think the accounts below are worth checking out, either for a laugh or for some desperately needed advice during your midday downtime at work. So read on, dear readers, and let us know who you’ve been following on Twitter, or who you would like to, in the comments section below.
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If you’ve ever wondered if there was a softer side to prickly Mark Twain (née Samuel Clemens), look no farther than this extremely sweet little love note that the author wrote to his wife Olivia Langdon Clemens back in 1888. “Livy Darling,” it reads, “I am grateful — gratefuler than ever before — that you were born, & that your love is mine & our two lives woven & welded together!” Gratefuler! Swoon. Fun fact: Their first date was some twenty years prior — a Charles Dickens reading in New York City. Click through to check out the extremely hard to read handwritten version.
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