paper trail

Aug 6, 2012 @ 7:34:00 pm

Sex and death are everywhere in fiction, but why are there no birth scenes in novels?

Americans are more embarrassed to read President Obama’s memoir in public than Fifty Shades of Grey. According to a recent 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, sixteen percent of people polled said they wouldn’t pull out Dreams From My Father in public, while only five percent said the same of the mommy porn phenomenon.

When tracking down sources fails: Language Log uses linguistic analysis to fact-check New Yorker pieces, focusing in on a Jared Diamond’s article about a clan war in Papua, New Guinea.

Kindle e-book sales have overtaken Amazon sales in the UK.

The Millions ranks the top ten most difficult books ever published. Finnegan’s Wake, Being and Time, The Phenomenology of the Spirit make the cut (of course), as do Nightwood and To the Lighthouse.

Gatsby fans will have to wait a little longer to see the novel treated in 3-D—Warner Brothers announced today that Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation has been delayed, and now won’t be released until 2013.

Ousted Oxford American editors Carol Ann Fitzgerald and Marc Smirnoff share their side of the story about their recent firings in a very long, and very specific blog post about the affair. The two were kicked out in mid-July, and according to an email Fitzgerald sent to Luna Park, have been denied access to their work computers and not been told why they were fired. “Please excuse the length,” Fitzgerald added, “but there was no way to defend ourselves in a tweet.