Disclaimer: we think you should go to college, if you can swing it. But sometimes it seems (especially in the media) that the college experience is just wave after wave of useless information cresting up out of a sea of cheap beer. So we’ve narrowed the whole four years down into ten essential books that will get you to the same place, only perhaps a little drier. If you aren’t going (or going back to) college this fall and wish you were, this list might just tide you over. And if you are, it’s sure to give you a leg up. Click through to check out our (tongue in cheek!) list of ten books that approximate the college experience, and let us know which you’d add or take away in the comments.
You may well have seen the posters for the upcoming film Moneyball and wondered, “What on earth is Brad Pitt doing in a movie about baseball?” But don’t be too quick to judge — because, while we can’t comment on the merits of the film as yet, we can definitely vouch for the book on which it’s based. It’s that rarest of beasts — a sports book that’s worth reading. But still, despite the market being dominated by tedious, ghostwritten autobiographies and badly written, stats-heavy snoozefests, Moneyball isn’t the only great sports book out there — if you’re willing to dig deep, there’s a decent amount of goodness to be had. So here’s Flavorpill’s choice of 10 sports-related books that are worth a look whether or not you’re interested in the sport concerned. Are there any on your bookshelf we’ve missed?
We hate to be the ones to say it, but the end of the summer romance is nigh, dear readers. As August becomes September, a noticeable chill lingers in the air; the cold creeps in slowly, hardening hearts and delivering sang-froid to young and old alike. In preparation, we suggest you arm yourselves with our modest arsenal of literary quotes that can be administered whenever you feel the time is right. Good luck, and let us know in the comments section what quotes have helped you get through a difficult breakup.
In response to Russ Marshalek’s excellent post on devastatingly sad books last week, we’ve decided to try and lift your spirits a little during this rainy week by suggesting books that are great escapes from the incessant grind of daily existence.
Last year, Wayne Gooderham wrote a thoughtful piece in the Guardian about emerging from the fog of depression by reading Saul Bellow’s 1964 epistolary tale of Moses E. Herzog — a brilliant but broken intellectual who is constantly writing letters, many which are never sent. Gooderham writes that Bellow renders “a potentially bleak topic in such a poignant and gently humorous way” in Herzog, which is the mark of a very good book. Since we’ve always been suckers for a love story, many of the selections on our list involve affairs of the heart, although we are also inspired by political nonfiction and comedy when they are done well. As always, we realize that any list made will be contentious, so please feel free to suggest alternatives in the comments section below.
In the late 1920s, newspaper columnist, reporter, playwright, and Algonquin wit Herman J. Mankiewicz moved from New York, the hotbed of American literary activity, to Hollywood. A few months later, he sent this cable to his writer friend Ben Hecht: “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.” Sooner or later, though, it did. Since their inception, the moving pictures have offered scribes the opportunity for comparatively easy money — a few weeks’ work dashing off a screenplay or a punch-up job to subsidize the year it’s going to take to write The Great American Novel.
Yesterday’s news that Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon will take a pass at the script to Disney’s Magic Kingdom movie (in the wake of Pirates of the Caribbean, that studio will not rest until every square inch of its theme parks have been turned into films) wasn’t a huge shocker — and not just because Chabon has done previous work for Disney, or worked on the script to Spider-Man 2. He is simply the latest respected author to take Tinsel Town up on the offer of a generous paycheck. Join us after the jump for a look at ten other literary figures that did the same.
Michel Houellebecq, France’s enfant terrible, has just released a pop song titled, “Le Film Du Dimanche” (The Sunday Film), available here. However, this isn’t his first effort at songwriting. In 2000, he released Présence Humaine, a nine-song album with funky keyboards and even some handclaps. And on a related side note, his 2005 novel The Possibility of an Island was the inspiration for Iggy Pop’s Préliminaires album. We first wrote about the crossover between writers and musicians back in 2009, but with the release of Houellebecq’s new single, it seems high time for another look at the phenomenon.
Nick Hornby’s sixth novel, Juliet, Naked, picks up where his previous ones left off: with spoiled manchildren, precocious real children, and the women who surround them. But this go-round, it’s the female who acts as protagonist, both as the subject who breaks off a long-term relationship and the object of a reclusive singer/songwriter’s curiosity. Hornby’s latest is set squarely in the present, dedicating a great portion of its story arc to the role of the Internet in modern life, via the chat forums of crazed fans or email correspondence between strangers.
After the jump, our exclusive chat with Nick Hornby, plus a video interview by Penguin Books about autobiographical elements in Juliet, Naked.
Today we’re checking out the trailer for An Education, an upcoming period drama about a British schoolgirl (dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn Carey Mulligan) whose Oxford-bound future is thrown for a loop when she meets an older man. The preview is lush — ’50s costumes! London! Paris! Peter Sarsgaard! — and kind of reminds us of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which is not a reference we can make often. Read More »
