November 18, 2015

NYRB archive, including complaining letters from Henry Kissinger and some surprising rejections, sold to NYPL

Yesterday the New York Public Library’s Board of Trustees announced that the library had acquired approximately 3,000 linear feet of editorial materials from the New York Review of Books archive. The papers date… Read more »

Arts & Culture

Salman Rushdie, Ian Rankin and Joanne Harris amongst those recognised in the Queen’s birthday honours list — Nikki Griffiths
Lost Charlotte Brontë manuscript sold for $1.25 million — Nikki Griffiths
Waterstones appeal aims to raise £1m for Ukraine disaster fund — Tom Clayton
The Big Jubilee Read: 70 books are selected to mark Queen Elizabeth II's 70 year reign — Nikki Griffiths

Hiding out in a bookstore in a city under attack

Simon Reichley

That bookstores and libraries can act as havens—for the lonely, the disenchanted, the revolutionary—is a familiar notion. Last Friday, Shakespeare and Company—the one on the banks of the Seine in Paris’s… Read more »

Death of Francis Bacon makes compiling a book of his collected paintings sort of easier

Chad Felix

We’d be forgiven for not wanting to look at too many more paintings by Francis Bacon, the 20th-century artist known for his raw depictions of popes, screams, and crucifixions. But if… Read more »

Germaine Greer’s 30,000-word love letter to Martin Amis and his “tobacco hair”

Zeljka Marosevic

Last week, MobyLives wrote about the correspondence of Ernest Hemingway, who, before he died, issued explicit instructions that his letters were not to be published after his death. A seven-volume… Read more »

The 2015 Word of the Year is … not a word

Taylor Sperry

In its perhaps most reflexive Word of the Year selection, Oxford Dictionaries has chosen the laugh/cry (or “Face with Tears of Joy”) emoji to represent 2015. It is, indeed, kind of… Read more »

Melville House Books