After three years helming The Book, The New Republic’s books site, Isaac Chotiner is leaving the digital realm to become a senior editor at the print magazine. He will be replaced by TNR deputy editor Chloë Schama.
Bucking expectations and economic trends, the New York Times reports that bookstores are booming in France. Thanks in part to a system of fixed pricing, book sales increased 6.5 percent between 2003 and 2011, and e-book sales remain a fraction of total sales. Citing the centrality of writers to French culture, the head of a small press told the Times, “there are two things you don’t throw out in France — bread and books.”
The Boston Review has gone to Kickstarter to fund their new “poetry-driven website.” Editor Josh Cohen has made a video explaining exactly what the new site will look like.
The trailer for Joe Wright’s adaptation of Anna Karenina—as re-written by playwright Tom Stoppard—has hit the internet. The high-drama, high-budget film stars Keira Knightley as Anna, and Jude Law and Aaron Johnson as her lovers.
The Millions points out that thanks to Yale’s Open Courses, it’s possible to watch all twenty-six of Amy Hungerford’s “The American Novel Since 1945” classes, and all of Paul Fry’s “Intro to the Theory of Literature” course. Summer break or not, we can’t think of a better way to procrastinate while avoiding the heat.
One of Germany’s leading experimental theater groups just put on a theatrical adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest that took place over twenty-four hours and eight locations across Berlin. Take that, Gatz.
A new app that pushes writers to reach their goals by threatening blackmail: Now writers can upload incriminating pictures of themselves to Aherk, a “goal-oriented self-blackmailing service.” Once these writers have met their self-defined writing goal, the app asks Facebook friends to vote on whether they think the goal has been met. If they don’t think it has, the photo is exposed for all the world to see. It doesn't sound that persuasive to us. Don't most writers thrive on self-exposure?
