I’m about a quarter of the way through Freedom, and it’s very delicious. Ever since childhood, I’ve had a bad habit of speedreading, but with this novel, I’ve had to force myself to slow down and reread some spectacular passages and some elegant and surprising sentences. I’ll update about the novel when I’m finished. In the meantime, I found the Canadian version of Freedom has a slightly different cover!
If Schadenfreude denotes the relishing of another’s pain, then – according to author Jennifer Weiner – Franzenfreude is “taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen.”
While this glut of attention may be irking other deserving authors, the consensus of glowing reviewers everywhere seems to be that Franzen’s new novel Freedom is a masterpiece, even earning from the Times a gushing comparison to Tolstoy and Thomas Mann.
NPR’s full story is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129529565
In case you missed it, local author Ellen Ruppel Shell was on Weekend Edition this Sunday talking about the recent egg recall, outlet malls, and shrimp farms, among other interesting topics. She teaches at Boston University and her latest book is Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.
Check out the interview here.
NPR has a very amusing article about Catherine Price’s book 101 Places Not to See Before You Die. Among the most praiseworthy — for their utter inappropriateness as travel destionations — are: Beijing’s Museum of Tap Water, Montana’s “Testicle Festival,” and a former Latvian prison which has, bizarrely, been converted into an exclusive hotel in which guests are still “treated” to iron beds and may elect to visit via abduction from their workplace.
Read the full article here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128692710
“It’s probably safe 
to say that most Americans don’t think about intellectual property laws on a daily basis. The closest most of us ever come to pondering copyright, trademark and patent issues is when we’re trying in vain to fast-forward through the FBI warning on a DVD. That’s not for lack of trying on the part of groups like the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, which have in the past sued individuals for file sharing and sponsored public information campaigns with the goal of educating American youths about music and movie “piracy” (that is, copyright infringement).” (Read more here.)
On the other hand, what about all the material in the public domain? If you’re interested in what is being done to collect, preserve, and make these works available to the public, take a minute to check out InternetArchive.org. Here, books that are becoming too fragile to handle, government documents you might never have realized were at your disposal, and items too rare to circulate, are digitized and made accessible to anyone with a computer. You can even listen to their archive of public domain audio files while you browse.
During his recent vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama had the good sense to stop by the resident indie bookstore and pick up some summer reading: Jonathan Franzen’s new novel Freedom (out on Tuesday), and Paul Harding’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut Tinkers.
Harding will be reading here with Rick Moody on Tuesday, 14 September.
The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar deftly navigates the complexities of class and ethnicity in India through Sera, a Parsi widow of the upper class, and her longtime Indian maid, Bhima.
Though the two women are different as night and day, they both harbor some dark burdens that make them more similar than at first sight.
This compelling book explores friendship and humanity in the fascinating backdrop of Bombay. This book is very highly recommended!
Father of the Rain by Lily King has won the New England Book Award in fiction, awarded by the New England Independent Booksellers Association.
Come see her read with us on Thursday, October 14 at 7 pm!
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