New York Times
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Bestsellers, Worst Ethics
Reading bestsellers lists can be baffling. You know the whole world isn’t going to spring for literary fiction or erudite essay collections all the time, but sometimes a book seems so bland and unremarkable that you wonder how so many…
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Keep Doubt Alive with Essays
If you’re a regular Rumpus reader, you probably like essays. And if you like essays, you’ll probably enjoy this New York Times opinion piece about their literary and social value: Ever since Michel de Montaigne, the founder of the modern essay,…
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“Music and Words Go Together So Nicely”
If writing and rock music go together like peanut butter and jelly, this New York Times essay is the diagonally cut sandwich bread that delivers them to your taste buds. In it, J. Robert Lennon probes the economic and artistic similarities…
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“The Dean of the Clerks”
If the Strand is a palace for books, then Ben McFall is king—of its fiction section, at least. A New York Times profile of McFall discusses his history with, knowledge of, and love for the legendary bookstore: “It seems like a…
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Learning to Truly Show Up
At the NYT Sunday Book Review, Cheryl Strayed reviews Andrew McCarthy’s new memoir, The Longest Way Home. “If I had to cut out the heart of this book, that’s where I’d put the knife, on that boy in the snow on…
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New Digs for the Classics
Publishers, including big guns like Penguin and HarperCollins, have begun to target teen readers by reinventing the cover design of many classic pieces of literature. Like Penguin’s new edition of Romeo and Juliet which features a “Romeo in stubble and…
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R.I.P. Anthony Shadid
Yesterday, Anthony Shadid, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times correspondent, died of an asthma attack while on assignment in Syria. His memoir, House of Stone, is to be released in just a few weeks.
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Always A Barista To Somebody
In The New York Times, Jason Diamond writes about celebrating having his work published, while the rest of the world still remembers him for his former barista days. “And while I may always be more recognizable on the city streets…
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New York Letter Love
Today, Letters In The Mail got double the love from The New York Times and NY Daily News. Thanks to you both!
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Julian Barnes Wins Man Booker Prize
Julian Barnes received the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending, “a slim and meditative story of mortality, frustration and regret.” Barnes had been nominated for the Booker three times before, and was “widely viewed as overdue” for…
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What Footnote?
“The e-book hasn’t killed the book; instead, it’s killing the ‘page.’ Today’s e-readers scroll text continuously, eliminating the single preformed page, along with any text defined by being on its bottom.” In this New York Times essay, Alexandra Horowitz discusses…
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British Hacking Scandal Roundup
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the British phone hacking scandal is the lack of coverage in the US press. Among the US newspapers, the NY Times is the only one I can find which has done significant reporting on…