Alphabet Books for Adults

Per restare sull'argomento dei libri sull'alfabeto, Alphabet Books for Adults è il titolo di un corso tenuto da Jacquelyn Ardam, graduate student di letteratura inglese a UCLA. Il syllabus presenta un elenco interessante di libri sull'alfabeto, e inizia in questo modo: "Most books about the alphabet are geared toward kids; they're for pre- and early readers who are just beginning to learn about letters, the basic building blocks of language. But the last century has seen the publication of a number of alphabet-related books that appeal to adults too. Some of these books were written with an adult audience in mind, while others transcend their intended youthful audience through their innovative form and content. All of the books on this list contain adult pleasures; they use the alphabetic sequence as a means to reflect on topics as varied as globalization, mortality, modern art, and, of course, language itself. We adults may already know the alphabet, but these books insist that we have been taking it for granted for far too long". bookforum.

H, la lettera più litigiosa

Michael Rosen, scrittore inglese per bambini, ha scritto un bel libro sulle lettere dell'alfabeto, Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story (John Murray). "Actually, in the course of writing my book about the history of the letters we use, Alphabetical, I discovered that the alphabet is far from neutral. Debates about power and class surround every letter, and H is the most contentious of all. No other letter has had such power to divide people into opposing camps. In Britain, H owes its name to the Normans, who brought their letter "hache" with them in 1066. Hache is the source of our word "hatchet": probably because a lower-case H looks a lot like an axe. ". guardian.

For Who(m) the Bell Tolls

For Who the Bell Tolls, il cui sottotilo fa: One's Man Quest for Grammatical Perfection, di David Marsh (Faber) è un manuale scherzoso di stile, scritto da un editor del Guardian. 
"With admirable clarity, Marsh goes on to explain the gerund and subjunctive, the difference between comparing to and comparing with, and the correct use of "whom", avoidance of which has given this book its deliberately teeth-grating title. Cleverly, Marsh here inverts the usual reasons for understanding conventions. You need to know the rule for "whom" not because you should use "whom" whenever appropriate (because it will sometimes sound pompous), but because you need absolutely to avoid using "whom" when it should actually be "who", since that will sound both pompous and stupid". guardian.

The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets

The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets è il titolo di un libro di Simon Singh (Bloomsbury), un fisico laureato a Cambridge che ora si occupa di divulgazione scientifica. Qui sostiene che i Simpson siano pieni di allusioni matematiche. "But "the truth", according to Singh, "is that many of the writers of The Simpsons are deeply in love with numbers, and their ultimate desire is to drip-feed morsels of mathematics into the subconscious minds of viewers". "Ultimate desire" may be pushing it, but as Singh demonstrates in his lively book, there's no shortage of mathematical jokes and references scattered through the show. Whether or not the writers of The Simpsons are covertly using a cartoon to foist mathematical concepts on the unwary, Singh without question is". guardian.

Donna Tartt e Michael Pietsch

Donna Tartt e Michael Pietsch

Slate propone un interessante dialogo tra la scrittrice Donna Tartt (di cui è recentemente uscito il romano The Goldfinch) e il suo editor a Little, Brown and Company, Michael Pietsch.

Pietsch: The editor works in disappearing ink. If a writer takes a suggestion, it becomes part of her creation. If not, it never happened. The editor’s work is and always should be invisible.

Most writers I know have more than one editor, beyond the one who works for the publishing company that has invested in their book—a small cadre whose advice on the manuscript they solicit and listen to. Do you have such a group?

Tartt: No not a group, though I have one or two people whose opinion I trust. slate.

The Chelsea Hotel, 2

Su Vanity Fair si trovano anche delle belle foto del Chelsea Hotel come è ora, prima della ristrutturazione, e di alcuni degli appartamenti ancora abitati. "You could go to one floor and talk about theater with Stefan Brecht,” remembers former resident Scott Griffin, “and go to another floor and talk to Arnold Weinstein about poetry and then have dinner downstairs with Arthur Miller. There aren’t many buildings in New York like that". vanityfair.

The Chelsea Hotel

Il Chelsea Hotel è in fase di ristrutturazione. Perderà la sua aura? Vanity Fair gli dedica un lungo articolo, corredato da molte testimonianze. E annuncia l'uscita di un libro che ne racconta la storia, Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel, di Sherill Tippins (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
"Today the halls of the Chelsea Hotel are salted with dust. The hundreds of paintings that adorned its walls have been locked away in storage. The doors to abandoned apartments are whitewashed and padlocked. Hotel operations ceased in 2011 for the first time in 106 years, and now the few remaining residents roam the echoing corridors like ghosts. They have watched workers haul out antique moldings, stained glass, even entire walls. Ancient pipes ruptured during renovations, flooding apartments, and neighbors returned home from work to find their front doors sealed in plastic wrap. The Chelsea’s new owners say that the building had fallen into dangerous disrepair, and they are restoring it to its original condition. Some residents believe that they are being forced out, and that the Chelsea as they know it—and as it was known to residents from Sherwood Anderson and Thomas Wolfe to Sid Vicious and Jasper Johns—will soon vanish before the city’s merchant greed". vanityfair.

The Perils of Precocity

"The Perils of Precocity" è una storia molto carina di Thomas Beller, uscita sul blog del New Yorker. Ha a che fare una lettrice bambina e con la lettura in generale. Ecco l'inizio, "Something strange is going on with my six-year-old daughter’s reading habits. Until a few days ago, she had no reading habits. Now she suddenly has her face stuck in all sorts of books that are not age-appropriate. This is especially striking because Evangeline has always been drawn to the screen". newyorker. 
Ripropongo la foto dell'articolo perché mi sembra anch'essa molto carina.

The Luminaries

The Luminaries è il titolo di un romanzone (848 pag., editore McClelland & Stewart) della scrittrice neozelandese Eleanor Catton, che è tra le finaliste del Man Booker Prize. Amazon lo definisce un "neo-Victorian murder mystery". Jenny Hendrix dice, "The Luminaries is, among other things, an experiment in predetermination. By extinguishing every coincidence, it turns literature into the same kind of problem as astrology: Do we want structural interpretation to dictate narrative, or is it best when a story’s structure, as one character puts it, “always changes in the telling”? slate.

How to Be a Person

How to Be a Person: The Stranger’s Guide to College, Sex, Intoxicants, Tacos, and Life Itself, Lindy West, Dan Savage, Christopher Frizzelle, Bethany Jean Clement, and the staff of the Stranger (Sasquatch Books). Il libro che dovrebbero leggere gli studenti di college, secondo Laura Helmuth, science and health editor di Slate. Perché:
"It’s full of funny, practical, opinionated, smart advice about everything college students are too embarrassed to ask about or don’t even know that they should ask about. How to get along with a roommate. How to get a date. How to break up. How to deal with a hangover. How to throw a party. How to come out of the closet. How to manage your finances. Plus lots of juicy sex advice from Dan Savage. Reading this book sure beats learning all about life through trial and error and lots of mortification like the rest of us did". slate.