I now live at Hogwarts

Because Harry Potter land is open!

Hundreds queued up for butterbeer, while others crowded into the Owl Post. By mid-afternoon, a line of 200 hopefuls stood outside Ollivanders wand shop. And another location to buy souvenir wands was added outside the Owl Post, which has been a bottleneck for shoppers.

At lunchtime, the line for Three Broomsticks restaurant extended out to the entrance of the Wizarding World, and more than 150 customers stood in the heat to buy butterbeer.

The lines are the real attraction, it seems.

Cute Penguin covers that don't technically exist

Amy Fleisher designed the absolute cutest classic Penguin covers that Penguin never designed. As a sucker for newly covered classics, I heart these.

Summer reading, or how I keep myself entertained

Honestly, I think the only reason people put such emphasis on summer reading is because there are no massive gift giving holidays to liven up sales. That said, hurray lists of summer reading!

If you are an indie lover, check out this list of choice summer reading from independent book sellers (from NPR, naturally). If you are a steamy romance reader, check out this list of steamasaurus rexes (written by one of the women from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, obvi). And if you are just really shallow (me!), check out these classics with great new covers.

Cue reading and no work getting done.

Tyra Banks, smizing model

Because while she writes, she smiles with her eyes. Her YA trilogy stars the Intoxibellas, and that's how you know this is actually Tyra's brainchild, because only she would come up with that.

Love. Her.

Call me Ishmael, one fierce tenor

After the news about the Atonement opera, I thought there was nowhere to go but to the land of less insane. With the rise of the Moby Dick opera, I can safely say: I was so, so wrong.

Moby Dick opera-style at the Dallas Opera now, but, with its inevitable success, I can only hope it will come to NYC and the Met, so I can see how they get a live sperm whale on the stage.* Ben Heppner, who plays Ahab, has this to say:

“I’m still trying to find my sea legs, which I guess I mean as a pun,” Mr. Heppner said after hobbling through his second day of rehearsals on the artificial limb his role requires....“Ahab is beautifully written for my voice,” Mr. Heppner said, “But today that peg leg was rubbing hard on my shinbone. I’d never thought about that, or I might have been less eager. But we’re making progress.”

And artist with the soul of a guy who doesn't like to have to wear things that chafe--we may be in love.

*Yes, I fully believe the Met would and could do this. Because they are bad ass.

Failed screenwriters of yesterday are the intellectuals of yesterday

In an excerpt from Eli Batuman's book, "The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them," Salon publishes a list of screenplays written by people famous for not being stifled screenwriters. This includes Winston Churchill, Jean-Paul Sartre, Aldous Huxley, and, of course, Vladimir Nabokov:

As a struggling young writer in Berlin, Vladimir Nabokov once wrote a phenomenally depressing screenplay titled "The Love of a Dwarf" (1924). The protagonist, a sexually frustrated London circus dwarf, has a one-night stand with the depressed, childless wife of a circus magician. The dwarf quits the circus and retires to a small northern town, waiting vainly for the magician’s wife to join him. Eight years later, she turns up on his doorstep, announces that he has a son, and rushes away. The dwarf pursues her, but dies of a heart attack at her feet. To the gathering onlookers, the magician’s wife announces that her son died a few days ago. In 1939, Esquire printed a short-story version of "The Love of a Dwarf," titled "The Potato Elf": it was Nabokov’s first American publication.

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

That is all.

Revisting the past, YA style

A new trend in the blogosphere is rereading childhood books and mocking their hilarity. Also enjoying the awesomeness that was Sweet Valley.

1770, a great year for sex

The 1770s, which saw the American Revolutionary War and the beginning of Britain's industrial revolution, was a trying decade for England. Luckily, that timeframe also saw the publication of the erotic pamphlet, The Crafty Chambermaid.

While we all appreciate ye olde erotica (Boccaccio, looking at you), not only is this original mass market written in verse, but the titles of the three segments are faboosh, being "How the young Merchant fell in Love with his Mother's Chambermaid"; "How they met in a Grove, where the young Merchant attempted her chastity"; and "How the Crafty Chambermaid outwitted the Merchant, by putting an old Bunter to her bed, which so affrighted him that he ran down Stairs and alarmed the Family; Concluding with their happy Marriage, and other things of Note".

Also from the article:

Another title in the collection is The Devonshire Garland. "This one's slightly racier," said custodian Emma Wright. "It includes incest and all sorts of things – the main protagonist dies when she realises she's inadvertently slept with her son."

People in the 1770s really knew how to party.

Classics be damned, one star!

Over at Salon, Jeanette Demain writes about the rash of one star reviews for classics on Amazon. Just because something is called a classic doesn't mean it's any good, sirs. My favorite review she cites is about Charlotte's Web:

I really didn't care that Wilbur won first prize. And how in the world does a pig and a spider become friends? It's beyond me....Even as a child I found the plot very far-fetched. It is because of this horrid book that I eat sausage every morning and tell my dad to kill every spider I see.

And my day has been made. Go to the link to check out all of the poorly spelled and completely ungrammatical rants. You will not be sorry.

What Phillip Pullman means to me

Phillip Pullman has been around the internet a lot lately, because of his new book about Jesus and the controversy it has stirred, as well has his views on the future of publishing and on censorship. However, his fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, is still the jewel in his crown, and Intelligent Life has a great analysis of Pullman's style, taking a look at the things that make him the writer he is.

When asked how to become an expert on art, Rabo Karabekian replies, "All you have to do, my dear, is look at a million paintings, and then you can never be mistaken." The same can be said for great writing--all you have to do, my dears, is read a million books (and probably think about how they're written), and you'll never be mistaken about good and bad writing again. One analysis down, 999,999 to go.

A man of twists and turns

No, not that man. In fact, men are not the only twisty turny creatures, as these stories fit the description as well! The link leads to a map of the paths of four different stories and the different geographical locales they have shown up in through time.They all start in the Fertile Crescent and most end up in LA. Coincidence?

History! So important!

The Country Bunny is the best books ever

At the New Yorker Book Bench, Kelly Bare writes about introducing her son to books she read as a child, including The Country Bunny.

I looooved this book as a kid (hey, Jews love Easter too...for candy and bunnies...). Some fun facts about the secret civil rights and feminist undertones:

“The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes” was published in 1939 by Du Bose Heyward, who is most famous for “Porgy and Bess” (he wrote the novel “Porgy,” co-wrote the play of the same name with his wife, Dorothy Heyward, and wrote the libretto and some of the lyrics for Gershwin’s opera). It’s illustrated by Marjorie Flack, whom you probably know (if you know her) from “The Story About Ping,” and it is the kid-lit total package. Lyrical writing, glowing illustrations, fuel for the imagination, a sense of humor, and, of course, a message: plucky little girl bunnies who defy prejudice and believe in themselves can grow up to become fully actualized lady bunnies who raise smart, happy, kind children and do fulfilling work outside the warren.

Having an excuse to purchase this book is on my list of reasons to have children. Also on the list is making it less weird to go see children's movies, and having a small tribe to begin building my army.

The siren song of the bookstore

Some days it is hard to pass by the bookstore without getting juuuust one book. Sometimes you need to know when to quit buying, and to read what you already have.

I actually did this for about a year (not because I was being moral about book buying, but because all my money went to "housing" and "food" and other such things), and it was actually pretty fun.I read, among other things, Band of Brothers, The Bell Jar, World War Z, and half of Catch 22 until I wanted to stab out my eyes with a fork and quit. I finished books I had abandoned and titles with ugly covers that I had been avoiding (it turns out, they have very nice personalities!).

The best part was that it confirmed that I do, in fact, have great taste.

Classically adult

Yesterday morning a friend sent me a list of names she had put together as a sample for work, with the note, "Am I pushing this too far?" I looked for dirty anagrams for 10 minutes before I wrote back, "...No?" Apparently they were all literary characters I had neeeeever heard of.

Enter Cathleen Schine, who wrote a really baller essay on cultural illiteracy and reading classics as an adult. She writes:

I got to read “Huckleberry Finn” for the first time when I was 35 years old. And when I eventually moved on to a different partner, there waiting for me was a new bookcase full of other books. I read “My Antonia” for the first time last month. That is a kind of grace.

I feel this on such a personal level it is almost unreal. I read Catcher in the Rye for the first time two years ago (and you know what? Should have read it when I was 12. Not so good the first time around as an adult). I got through my first Faulkner (eh), and read (and enjoyed, for the first time ever!) To Kill a Mockingbird.

Some days, you have to enjoy being functionaly illiterate.

Author arts and crafts

Needlepointer Joanna paid homage to Kurt Vonnegut by making crafts in his honor. And you know what? They are awesome.

I propose we all make arts and crafts for our heroes. Max Brooks, I'm coming for you: in craft form.

Email me any author-crafts you make, and I will showcase them on my fridge. Also on the blog, but mostly my fridge.

Mon dieu, racist Gerard Depardieu!

Given our previous Alexandre Dumas news, it should come as no surprise that the man is a drama storm. Gerard Depardieu was cast to play Dumas in a biopic, in which he darkens his skin and changes his hair to play the biracial author, a la Ben Kingsley as Ghandi.

Non-white celebrities, some Dumas experts and black organisations are angry because they say that the producers missed a chance to celebrate ethnic diversity in France and remind the world of the writer’s origins. “There is a mechanism of permanent discrimination by silence,” Jacques Martial, a black actor, said.

France has a pretty terrible record when it comes to not being racist (and religiously tolerant), so I am not surprised that people are mad.

I own your birthplaces, author types

Because I am so interested in you and your histories! Charles McGrath writes:

That we tend to fetishize writers’ residences is a little odd to begin with. By and large the same fuss doesn’t get made over places where artists have lived, and yet you could argue that an artist’s surroundings have more bearing on his work. But birthplaces themselves are an even odder subcategory, certainly less interesting, in general, than the houses where writers have actually worked.

This is one of those things I don't really get, as I'm not particularly interested in author's lives. I like my celebrities and heroes up on pedestals, thank you very much, and the more I know about their lives and habits and drug problems the less I respect their work.

That said, there is something weird about the fuss we make over birthplaces versus adult abodes of writers. Adult homes are where authors chose to be inspired, as opposed to where their parents decided to pop them out. Luckily, McGrath writes:

Nobody is born at home anymore, and who would want to make a literary pilgrimage to a hospital?

I'll see you in hell (the video game tie-in)!

Pew pew pew pew oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there, I was busying shooting the denizens of hell in Dante's Inferno, the video game. Virgil got me past a lot of the circles, but I can't escape Count Ugolino gnawing on my head.

After this, Electronic Arts will be putting out a game based on Boccaccio's Decameron, in which you try to avoid getting the plague by retiring to your country villa and telling stories while the poor die around you. Oh no, watch out for the syphilis!

Drawing from a classic

PW has a great article about adapting graphic novels from classics. Although the earliest adaptations were in the 1940s, they have seriously picked up steam, with traditional comic book publishers, trade publishers, and academic publishers jumping on the bandwagon.

But, as the author Ada Price writes:

But some of the biggest problems in adapting Shakespeare, as well as other classics, remain the abridgment of the text and the work's original language, which can be difficult and off-putting for modern readers.

And while editor Thomas LeBien says, "The graphic novel doesn't cannibalize sales of the original. They re-energize the originals," do we agree? Does this add to people reading classics? I liken this to the Twilight/Wuthering Heights phenomenon, in which Twilight boosted Wuthering Heights' sales. It might just make people ask if the classic is "in old english or mordern understandable english."

Fingerprinting the greats

Literary scientists have analyzed the collected works of different writers, and come up with charts of which unique words different people use, and how often.

The researchers gathered together the complete works of Hardy, Melville, and Lawrence, and measured that dependence—counting the number of new unique words as a particular author's works get longer and longer.

They used sections from books of varying lengths, randomly pulled from novels, alongside shorter works and short stories.

They found that the authors had distinctly different "unique word" curves.

The team suggests that a work by an unknown author could therefore be compared to prior works, with the curve acting as a linguistic "fingerprint".

My fingerprint-able words would be "zombie apocalypse" and "shenanigans."