Coverage of Japan’s earthquake and aftershocks from the London Review of Books blog: A first-person account of the quake and its aftermath by R.T. Ashcroft, and a post from Hugh Pennington, who writes today that the nuclear risk from the stricken Fukushima I power plant is more like Three Mile Island than Chernobyl.
James Frey, never shy about, well, anything really, plans to stoke the flames of controversy once again with a new novel about the second coming of Christ in the Bronx.
Is all publicity good publicity? Only if you’re an unknown writer, says a new study, which shows that a negative review in the Times increases sales by 45% for obscure authors. [Via The Millions.]
The Morning News, the site behind the amazingly entertaining Tournament of Books, has cobbled together “the greatest book review ever.” Meanwhile, at their tournament, the battles continue: The bravura novel of adolescence, Skippy Dies, was just beaten by the newly crowned NBCC winner for fiction, A Visit from the Goon Squad.
John Wyndham once noted that the British were “branded on the tongue;” citizens of the UK are highly attuned to subtle differences in accent and dialect, and the way you speak reveals important information about who you are and where you come from. Americans, meanwhile, will have to rely on the British Library’s multimedia guide to accents and dialects in the UK.
