paper trail

Aug 30, 2012 @ 12:01:00 am

Mitt's great-grandfather Miles P. Romney

Confessions of a literary philanderer: Mark O’Connell wonders why, after years of being a faithful reader and always finishing what he started, he suddenly started abandoning books halfway through.

The PEN American Center has declared the winners of this year’s PEN Awards. Robert K. Massie, Siddhartha Debb, James Gleick, Vanessa Veselka, and Susan Nussbaum all took away prize. A full list of winners is available here.

The John Updike Society bought the author’s childhood home in Shillington, Pennsylvania, for $180,000 on Monday, and has announced plans to turn it into a museum.

Gothamist tries, and fails, to interview author Amy Sohn about her new novel Motherland and modern parenting. It remains unclear whether all her married are cheating and partying to excess, and if they are whether it is Park Slope’s fault.

Why is Raymond Chandler biographer Judith Freeman claiming that Mitt Romney owes her money? In an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Freeman traces an outstanding debt between her family and the Romneys that goes back more than a century to a loan that was never repaid.

Following the lead of Vanity Fair, The Atlantic has published its first e-book. The Obama Presidency, Explained is authored by James Fallows, and edited by Scott Stossel, Corby Kummer, J.J. Gould, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.