Now, here’s a website that will have us procrastinating for hours on end. At the Literature-Map, which we read about over at the Vintage & Anchor Tumblr, you enter the name of any writer and are rewarded with a swirling bunch of names that settles into a map — not of influences, but of what other people who like that same author also like. The closer two writers are to each other on the map, the more likely it is that the same reader will love them both, and you may click from writer to writer, building a map from each one and exploring the matrix of literary taste. We must say, it’s the perfect tool for the holidays — if you’re wondering just what you should get your niece who only likes Nietzsche or your brother who only likes Gertrude Stein, just plug them in and you’ll be sure to pick a winner. But it also has the added bonus of filling up your to-read list faster than an amble through a cozy bookstore. Which reminds us, man, do we have a lot of reading to do.
With so many reports about independent booksellers closing and book sales in decline, World Book Night has been a beacon of hope for lit fans across the globe. Looking for ways to promote “a million reasons to read a book,” the celebrated day will take place on April 23, 2012 this year and will include the US in its festivities for the first time. Last year’s event saw an increase in book sales, according to the LA Times, after thousands of volunteers across the UK literally stood on sidewalks passing out free books to random folks. Brit publishers have posted this year’s selection of freebies, including Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. American publishers haven’t posted their 25 titles yet, but some choices are expected to overlap. Keep your eyes peeled for the official website coming soon, and visit the UK home base for now to get acquainted with how to become a “giver” (volunteer). Do you like this approach to promote book/reading appreciation?
Virginia Woolf — most know the name, but few know the obscure biographical facts behind the name. Today, for example, is the day of her birth. To celebrate the 59 years that Woolf spent observing and writing about our world, we bring you 59 tidbits about her life. So, go ahead! Get better acquainted with one of the 20th century’s most important authors after the jump.
Last week, we learned that a video game version of The Great Gatsby exists. While we’re not opposed to adapting classics into video games as a general rule (see Dante’s Inferno), this one doesn’t even sound like fun. From the official description: “Attend extravagant parties and lush gatherings as you dance the Charleston with a happy couple harboring scintillating secrets.” You know, so that you can be as bored by it all as Gatsby was. In response, we’ve come up with a list of 10 equally unlikely classics that would actually make great games. Check them out after the jump, and add your own suggestions in comments.
It never fails: Every Bloomsday, someone reminds us that Kate Bush’s “The Sensual World” is based on James Joyce’s Ulysses. Not that we mind — it’s always nice to have an excuse to listen to the song again. But this year, it inspired a lit-geek challenge: Could we compile an entire mixtape of songs inspired by modernist masters? While who qualifies as a modernist is a question for literary scholars to debate, we’re pretty satisfied with the 12 songs we’ve chosen. Tell us what you’d include in the comments.
Between gossip blogs and the weekly glossies, watching high profile people play out their personal indiscretions and humiliations in public has become a staple of modern culture. We witch hunt mistresses, follow divorces like sporting matches, and feast on depraved behavior.
What if your favorite literary characters were subjected to the same level of scrutiny? We have compiled a list of fictional characters that in today’s day and age would be tabloid sensations for their turbulent romances and dramatic downward spirals. Lindsay Lohan and Jon Gosselin step aside, here are the top ten literary characters that the tabloids of today would be crazy for.
Some of us (judging from the comment thread on our best-of-YA-fiction post, a lot of us) may have spent an obscenely large percentage of our childhoods shining flashlights under covers and making ourselves carsick in order to finish just one more chapter in our favorite paperbacks. For one of us — ahem — the flavor of the week was usually a mystery, and we’re not referring to Encyclopedia Brown. It started with Nancy Drew and soon took a turn for the British, with Dame Agatha Christie and her subversive band of old maids, foreign detectives, and quietly scheming vicars. The next phase got a little pulpier: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, wisecracks, whiskey.
Unfortunately the grand era of detective novel book design had long since passed, epitomized by the Dell Books imprint running from 1943 to 1952. During the nine year span, Dell would publish a staggering 577 books with “map backs,” an illustrated feature on the back cover that set the scene for the twisty plots within. After the jump, take a peek at some of our favorite discoveries.
Canonized literature meets byte-sized social media in a new project by the Royal Shakespeare Company meant to pitch Shakespeare to a younger generation. We read along as novelist Rick Moody tweeted an entire short story in 140-character tweets, but supplementing The Bard seems like a trickier proposition, at least as it’s implemented in Such Tweet Sorrow, the RSC’s online story tying into its spring production of Romeo & Juliet. The venerable theater (theatre?) troupe’s leading actress, 16-year-old Charlotte Wakefield, has been prepped to tweet as Juliet Capulet for the next five weeks, responding to other actors as well as her Twitter audience and real-life events (to wit, a crush on Robert Pattinson).
We’ve spotted a couple of Twitter gems from Juliet and her nurse, though the narrative is not as entertaining as one would hope — this is William Shakespeare, after all, King of Slang and Olde English patois. So whose Twitter feed would we rather follow? Our suggestions after the jump.
2010 has been a big year for Hilary Duff. First she got engaged, and now she’s working with the folks at Simon & Schuster on a Young Adult series. The first novel, Elixir, will center on photojournalist Clea Raymond’s many adventures and is due out in October. It got us thinking: What if other teen celebrities suddenly decided to pick up the pen? What would a Justin Bieber novel even be about? After the jump find the descriptions for our fictional best-seller list, which read a lot like you might expect if you follow these moppets in the tabloids.
On the occasion of Elmore Leonard‘s new book, Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, The Guardian has commissioned the sage advice of other career fiction authors, with entertaining results. Some get specific, like panning the online timesuck (sorry!) — Zadie Smith’s suggestion to “work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet” is echoed by Jonathan Franzen’s sentiment that “It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.” Others spout general maxims, such as David Hare’s “No one has ever achieved consistency as a screenwriter.”
Click through for some of our favorites, and see if you can spot the parallels (and contradictions) to the writers’ own work.
, The Guardian has commissioned 
