Every Friday, the staff at Literary Traveler gathers up relevant book news from around the web, bringing it together in a handy post for book lovers to peruse. Enjoy!
Let’s start off with the biggest story of the week: the iPad. Now that it’s here, what can it do for us? Well, according to the reviewers at Salon, it offers a “serene” reading experience, perfect for getting lost in a text. And although the iBooks store is rather anemic right now, Amazon is offering an app to download Kindle books to the iPad, which might just be the best of both worlds.- And for even more on e-readers, check out the series of essays on the new medium over at Critical Mass. “I prefer paper for everything,” writes columnist Martha Cornog.
- Also trendy: Vampires. It seems that the blood-suckers aren’t going away any time soon, so educate yourself on the “ethical” breed of domesticated monsters with Emily Colette Wilkinson’s fascinating take on our modern vampire romance. If that whets your appetite for blood, The Guardian has a few great book recommendations for horror fans.
- Margaret Atwood is on Twitter! And she is very appreciative of her followers, who have sent her “many interesting items pertaining to artificially-grown pig flesh, unusual slugs, and the like.” She also includes one of the most flattering descriptions of Twitter we’ve ever read: “It’s something like having fairies at the bottom of your garden.”
- Preeminent Twain scholar Laura Skandera Trombley appeared yesterday on the Leonard Lopate Show to talk about Mark Twain’s “other woman,” Isabel Lyon. “Twain in effect made her his substitute wife,” she explains. Trombley also suggests that Lyon always hoped Twain would marry her, but she was happy to work for “the most famous man in the world.”
- And finally, take a moment to ponder the tragedy of so-called “lost literature.” There are many great pieces that time – and the general reading public – forgot, including the works of Ukrainian writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky and Russian author Danill Kharms. Perhaps it’s time to celebrate some of our favorite, lesser-known authors before it is too late.
