As the bookish among you are most likely aware, literature and liquor have gone hand in hand since time immemorial. But while we know which drinks our favorite authors liked to imbibe while creating, that’s not necessarily a good indication of which drinks are best to read their work by. We’ve already given you our suggestions on the cocktails you should pair with your favorite TV shows, but if you’re more likely to be curled up with a book than in front of the small screen this weekend, we have a few thoughts as to how to best keep the party going in your living room. Click through to read about the cocktails we would pair with ten of our favorite novels, and if you’ve found another winning combination, give us your own recommendations in the comments! … Read More
William Faulkner
10 Famous Authors Who Dropped Out of School
This time of year, we often find ourselves thinking about the origins of our favorite writers — how they found themselves on the writing path, what they read, how they learned. And we’ve been surprised to realize how many successful and even legendary writers dropped out of school and ended up teaching themselves. Here are ten who went on to achieve great success with independent… Read More
10 of the Greatest Short Stories About Love
Tomorrow, Junot Díaz’s newest story collection, This is How You Lose Her, hits shelves, and we predict that everyone you know will be reading it by the weekend. Or at least they should be — this messy, vulgar set of tales about misadventures of the heart is filled with Díaz’s signature searing voice, loveable/despicable characters and so-true-it-hurts goodness. To celebrate Díaz’s new collection, we’ve put together a collection of a few more of our all-time favorite love stories, from the recent to the classic, and dealing with all kinds of that most complex emotion. Of course, this is not by all means a definitive list — we rejoice at how un-definitive it is, in fact — so please add your own favorite short stories on love in the comments. … Read More
The First Edition Covers of 25 Classic Books
We try not to judge books by their covers — both proverbially and literally — but sometimes we just can’t help it. After all, the cover is your first impression of a book, and can inform the way you approach it. Plus, at least in our experience, any avid reader who carries a book wherever she goes has memories and feelings attached to it that can be instantly dredged up by a peek at the cover art. But of course, most book covers change over the years, whether minimally, correcting for modern fonts and colors, or maximally, going through radical change after radical change, each generation connecting (or not connecting) to a different design. With that in mind, after the jump, we’ve collected a few first edition covers of classic books, some of which may be familiar to you — a certain blue masterpiece will perhaps never fall out of favor — though some have been replaced by much more iconic imagery or fallen out of favor. Click through to reminisce over (or discover) 25 covers of classic books, and let us know if we missed your favorite in the comments. … Read More
10 Books That Are Meant to Be Savored
As Francis Bacon famously wrote, “Some books are meant to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; That is, some books are to be read only in parts; Others to be read, but not curiously; And some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” As voracious readers, we like to think we give each book we read its due diligence, but you can’t deny that some are worth lingering over, worth turning over in your mind, worth cherishing, longer than others. Of course, such a thing is only objective to a certain extent — everyone has their own favorites, and everyone’s own favorites are, for them, just as important as anyone else’s. Here, we present a list of ten books we think are worth savoring, poring over, and thinking about for years — add to it with your own choices in the comments. … Read More
Exclusive Infographic: The Greatest Books of All Time
What are the greatest books of all time? And who should be the judge? Recently, Brain Pickings pointed out an awesome book of lists wherein 125 famous authors — everyone from Norman Mailer to Claire Messud to Annie Proulx to Stephen King — choose their ten favorite books. The book, The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, then handily synthesizes all that info (544 works total mentioned in 125 lists) into a few important master lists: namely, the greatest books and authors of all time. Each book is assigned a value based on its position in any given list — that is, ”a first-place pick is worth ten points, and a tenth-place pick is worth one point” and so on — and those numbers are then added up to give each book a ranking. We’ve collected a few of the top rankings here in an easy to digest infographic. How many have you read? … Read More
Surprising Screenplays Written by Famous Authors
It’s not unusual for artists and other creatives to dabble in different mediums, especially when it comes to writers. Hollywood saw many well-known novelists pounding the pavement, looking for work — particularly through the 1950s. They were a hot commodity in Tinseltown when the demand for convincing characters, dialogue, and story lines became essential to box office success — and they were broke. Sometimes, though, the famous authors who took a turn at screenwriting have surprised us with the scope of their cinematic endeavors. Some of these unlikely pairings were in it for the paycheck. Other writers did it to flex their creative muscles, and several just seem to be really big geeks for genre films, which makes us love them even more. Whatever the reasons, you’ll find a few surprises past the break. Check out which of your favorite authors also wrote for the big screen after the jump. … Read More
10 Books to Put Hair On Your Chest
Of all the emblems of masculinity in pop culture, one of the most enduring also happens to be one of our favorite writers: the big game hunting, gruff talking, bullfighting enthusiast war hero, Ernest Hemingway. Today being the 113th anniversary of the author’s birth, we decided to honor him with a little list of books that might help you live up to the Hemingway memory by putting a little hair on your chest — totally metaphoric hair, that is (well, probably). Click through to see our reading list for tough guys and gals of all persuasions, and let us know which books you’d add in the comments. … Read More
Awesome Infographic: The Graph of Ideas
Talk about your ambitious design projects: Brendan Griffen set out to make a graph charting the relationship between all of the thinkers, authors, and comedians in history — or at least all of the ones who can be found on Wikipedia. “The size of the nodes indicates how influential their work was to… Read More
Pithy Literary Posters Perfect for Writers’ Salons
Still tickled by Capote’s epic and oft-quoted insult to Kerouac’s writing? Agree with William Faulkner that “civilization begins with distillation”? Now you can have them in poster form, accompanied by lovely minimalist illustrations by New York-based artist Evan Robertson. Robertson, whose poster series we discovered over at Jacket Copy, describes his work as “inspired by my love of literature, word play and straight-shooting language,” and indeed, the prints are filled with visual puns and insider nudges that will have the word nerds among you punning with delight. Plus, it never hurts to add a little extra literary wisdom to your décor. Click through to browse ten of our favorites from Robertson’s collection, and then if you must have one for your study, salon, or writers’ retreat, head over to his Etsy shop to make one of them your very own. … Read More
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