Morning Bites: Philip Roth’s nonexistent Nobel, Truffaut’s Bradbury, vampire Jews, and more

Winter is coming (well, the holiday shopping season is, but winter nonetheless), and it’s getting everybody really psyched about the impending Kindle Fire vs. iPad wars.  Slate and The Daily Beast weigh in. At The Millions: Can we please just give Philip Roth a fricken Nobel Prize already?  Until then, he’s just gonna keep chilling. Taking a look at Truffaut’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. This week will see the release of Arthur Conan Doyle’s long lost first novel, […]

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Kindle at the Passover Seder?

Ah Passover.  You aren’t as depressing as Yom Kippur, and certainly aren’t as fun as the drunken celebration of Purim. No Passover, you get the distinction of being the most boring of the Jewish holidays. At least you’re keep up with the times: now we can use an eBook to ask the 4 questions. The latest publication vying for attention in the Passover canon is “Haggadah for the Fifth Child.” A clever title, for, as every Seder-jaded Jew knows, ordinarily […]

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The Week in Moody

In case you aren’t keeping track of the exploits of Rick Moody, rest assured that for some reason, I am. Today Mr. Moody gave us another installment of his “Swinging Modern Sounds” column on The Rumpus. A few days back, Moody talked about his repulsion/attraction of the Kindle. Because of Rick Moody, this guy will listen to Metal Machine Music.  Good luck bro.

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Bites: Polish Crime Covers, Lit in the 00’s, David Foster Wallace, Pacino as Shylock, and More

  Over at The Rumpus, we learn that Poland just knows how to do sweet cover art for their crime novels. At New York Magazine, Sam Anderson rips into the 00’s.  Appearances by David Foster Wallace, Junot Díaz. Bolaño, Eggers, P.G. Wodehouse, Borges, and Wilde.   A nod to N+1, a short drive into Kindle territory, and then ends by again talking about the same book that started him on the whole conversation: Infinite Jest. Most of the book’s action […]

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Weekend Bites: Truman and Harry, David Byrne on Kindle, good friends-bad novels, Naked Lunch at 50, and more.

I always said Truman Capote knew the boy wizard, and nobody believed me. So I guess I shouldn’t buy Mastering the Art of French Cooking because “unfortunately, that will probably send even more Meryl Streep wannabes straight to bookstores looking for food porn. And they will be sold bibles.”  Bummer (Slate) David Byrne: Kindle DRM means “you are f*cked” (Thanks Boing Boing) Two A.V. Chicago writers ask if Ferris Bueller was true to it’s Chicago backdrop Jens Lekman will play […]

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Bites: The kids got a new Catch-22, Ray Bradbury knows how to party, Malt Whitman, and more

Everybody has one of those books that you have always meant to read, but never seem to get around to, and mine is Catch-22. The Guardian asks what is “The New Generation’s Catch-22“, and now I’m wondering should I just give up on Joseph Heller’s novel, and check in on what ‘the kids’ are reading? There’s gonna be a Ray Bradbury birthday up in this mofo. (via Boing Boing) Amazon is getting sued by a 17-year-old because his copy of […]

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Bites: New Princeton song, bad children books, fiction issues, the growing influence of Kindle, and more

Last year when we conversed with Princeton (pictured above), they were just getting over the heaps of critical praise after six months promoting their phenomenal four song Bloomsbury EP, we hardly had any ideas about their future. Now, nearly five months after that conversation, the group gets set to release their first album on Kanine Records, Cocoon of Love, and have given us the first single, “Calypso Gold“. I now predict that the world is six months away from being […]

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