“The Anomaly,” by Hervé Le Tellier, sold more than a million copies during an anomalous time. Now the genre-bending novel is translated into English. Read more
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Author: GR
Barnes & Noble booksellers reveal book of the year: ‘magnificent and deeply original’
Singer and songwriter Paul McCartney’s book “The Lyrics” is Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year for 2021 … Begun in 2019, Barnes & Noble’s books of the year are nominated by booksellers across the nation and then narrowed to eight titles by a selection committee. The booksellers then vote on the eight titles for their favorite of the year. Read more
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‘True Grit’ is a modern classic, but it’s not the only great work by Charles Portis
Portis, who died in 2020, is best known for “True Grit,” the modern classic about 14-year-old Mattie Ross, who enlists a grizzled, one-eyed U.S. Marshal named Rooster Cogburn to help her hunt down her father’s murderer. Read more
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Man exonerated in 1981 rape of author Alice Sebold after film project finds discrepancies
A rape conviction at the center of a memoir by award-winning author Alice Sebold has been overturned because of what authorities determined were serious flaws with the 1982 prosecution and concerns the wrong man had been sent to jail. Read more
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Einstein manuscript with relativity calculations sold for more than $13M at Paris auction
A rare manuscript featuring early calculations that led to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity sold for just over $13 million at an auction in Paris Tuesday, becoming the most expensive manuscript by the famed scientist. Read more
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Tolkien estate blocks ‘JRR Token’ cryptocurrency
The Road might go “ever on and on” for Bilbo Baggins, but it has come to a sharp end for the developer of a cryptocurrency called JRR Token, after the estate of JRR Tolkien took legal action to block it. Read more
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The real-life demons that drove Dostoevsky to write his masterpiece
The creditors whom Kevin Birmingham relied on to write “The Sinner and the Saint” — a dexterous biblio-biography about how “Crime and Punishment” came to be born — include a formidable array of scholars as well as Dostoevsky himself. Yet the biographer betrays no sign of panic. The tale he tells is rich, complex and convoluted, and though he must have struggled in constructing it, Birmingham writes with the poise and precision his subject sometimes lacked. (Though it worked out all right for him.) Read more
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How H.G. Wells Predicted the 20th Century
…Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), a towering genius successful in many genres, knew, influenced or was admired by virtually every major writer and thinker of his time, between the publication of his first novel, “The Time Machine,” in 1895 and the end of World War II. Read more
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A Robot Wrote This Book Review
In “The Age of AI,” Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher explore how far artificial intelligence has come. Read more
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How Memphis Created the Nation’s Most Innovative Public Library
It’s difficult to summarize the myriad changes taking place in American public libraries, but one thing is certain. Libraries are no longer hushed repositories of books. Here at the Central branch in Memphis, ukulele flash mobs materialize and seniors dance the fox trot in upstairs rooms. The library hosts U.S. naturalization ceremonies, job fairs, financial literacy seminars, jazz concerts, cooking classes, film screenings and many other events—more than 7,000 at last count. You can check out books and movies, to be sure, but also sewing machines, bicycle repair kits and laptop computers. And late fees? A thing of the past. Read more
