Blog Profile / The Millions
| URL : | http://www.themillionsblog.com/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Entertainment / Books | |
| Posts on Regator: | 6660 | |
| Posts / Week: | 29.8 | |
| Archived Since: | February 11, 2009 | |
Blog Post Archive
Kai and Uncle Ruslan: When Memes Go Dark
“‘It’s important to realize how the funniness in these videos [such as those featuring Kai the axe-wielding hitchhiker and Uncle Ruslan] is really close to something that’s desperately unfunny,’ says Mark O’Connell, who wrote Epic Fail:...Show More Summary
Go Go Gadget Classical Compositions
Fun Fact: the Inspector Gadget theme song is actually based on Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” Seriously. Related posts: The Classical Goes Old School The Classical is launching a monthly magazine.... The Scream Edvard...Show More Summary
Finnegans Draft
Ordinarily I would caution against reading a novel’s first draft, however in the case of Finnegans Wake, perhaps all rules should be tossed out the window. With this one, it seems as though any and all supplemental material might help unlock the finished product’s mysteries. Case in point: the entire first draft of Joyce’s most [...]Show More Summary
A Parasite Called Media
“The media of my childhood, mostly weekly television shows and overused VHS tapes, was like a good pet. Sure, it was a little costly to keep around, but it was lovable, and I could always shut it out in the yard for a while. Now, though, media is always with me, always trying to snag [...]Show More Summary
Press Play
The New York Times unveiled a new music blog entitled Press Play. Each week, the blog will “present tracks from an upcoming new album.” Related posts: OWS and the Press How do you spell t-r-a-c-t-i-o-n? Our recent stories about the... UC...Show More Summary
Free to Be Depressed and Alone: On George Packer’s The Unwinding
Occasionally, societies fall apart. These are the voices of those caught in the current American vortex of disconnection and angst.
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George Packer’s good book on Iraq New Yorker writer, George Packer has written some impressive...Show More Summary
Inherent Vice’s Star-Studded Cast
Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice is going to have one heck of a star-studded cast. Among the names attached to the production thus far are Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short and Sean Penn. The film is tentatively scheduled for a 2014 release. (Bonus: Take a sneak [...]Show More Summary
Once You See It
Presented Without Comment: the newly unveiled logo for the newly enacted College Football Playoff and the new poster for Lars von Trier’s latest film, Nymphomaniac.
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“Jawline of an aircraft carrier” “It’s like a crackpot...Show More Summary
The Nobel Isn’t Everything
Wole Soyinka does not approve of the push for Chinua Achebe to be awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize for Literature, and he doesn’t appreciate fan letters asking for his support to that end. “How did creative valuation descend to such banality?” Soyinka remarks in an interview with SaharaReporters. “Do these people know what they’re doing [...]Show More Summary
The Common in the City Party
Tonight! Celebrate 3 years with The Common. You can still buy tickets to this elegant lit party here. André Aciman reads from his latest novel Harvard Square. Related posts: Party in the City Where the Book Fair’s On South Florida...Show More Summary
Poe’s Back
After a period of uncertainty, Baltimore’s Edgar Allan Poe House is finally scheduled for reopening. To celebrate the victory, check out Édouard Manet’s illustrations for the French edition of “The Raven.” Related posts: Every HouseShow More Summary
Nothing Funnier Than Unhappiness: A Necessarily Ill-Informed Argument for Flann O’Brien’s The Poor Mouth as the Funniest Book Ever Written
Here’s how funny it is: It’s funnier than A Confederacy of Dunces. It’s funnier than Money or Lucky Jim. It beats Shalom Auslander to a bloody, chuckling pulp with his own funny-bone. It is certainly the funniest book I’ve ever read.
Related...Show More Summary
The Man Was Hard on Himself
Hot on the heels of The New Yorker, The Paris Review is excerpting Calvino’s letters. In Monday’s entry, POSTERITY IS STUPID, the author writes the following: “Although I am small, ugly and dirty, I am highly ambitious and at the slightest...Show More Summary
Finding the Red Moon
ICYMI: Brad Listi interviewed Benjamin Percy as part of his Other People Podcast. Among other things, they talked about Percy’s new novel. Related posts: Brad Listi Finally Gets Interviewed The NY Daily News sat Other People Podcast‘s...Show More Summary
Holden Caulfield Has No Friends
Chances are you’ve heard that in a recent interview, Claire Messud responded to a patronizing question about one of her characters — “I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you?” — by giving her interviewer a smackdown that resonated across the blogosphere. At Page-Turner, several authors (including Rivka Galchen, Jonathan Franzen and Year [...]Show More Summary
Brooklyn is Coming to Eat Your Children
The reach of literary Brooklyn grows ever larger, as local hub BookCourt mounts a $300,000 campaign to convert the “Bibliobarn,” 160 miles north in the Catskills, into a “bookshop, event space, and writers’ retreat.” Upstaters, lockShow More Summary
The Mind Reels
Alcohol. Promiscuity. LSD. All three are said to inspire creative minds. And if Sarah Dunant’s well-researched new novel, Blood and Beauty, is credible, we can add a new one, syphilis, to the list. (Wait, what?) Related posts: Inside...Show More Summary
Tuesday New Release Day: Hosseini, Nesbø, Tarttelin, Tolkien, Packer
New this week: And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini; The Redeemer, a new Harry Hole novel from Jo Nesbø (see our interview); and Abigail Tarttelin’s debut novel Golden Boy. Also out: The Fall of Arthur, J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic poem, and George Packer’s The Unwinding. Bonus Links: You can now subscribe to listings of literary [...]Show More Summary
At the Frontiers of the Unsayable: Bennett Sims’s A Questionable Shape
There may be readers who will — on discovering that A Questionable Shape combines a quest, a romance, humor, and an epidemic of zombies, with philosophy, footnotes, history, science, the arts, half of Daniel Webster, cascades of lyricism and truckloads of realism — refuse to so much as open the back cover. Show More Summary
Hold On
Lindsay King-Miller — she of Ask A Queer Chick — pays tribute to an old friend who died before her twenty-sixth birthday. Related posts: Avoiding “Chick-Lit” Chick authors who avoid the “chick-lit” stigma.... Dinner With Henry Miller Name a famous person, living or dead, you’d like to... The End of the Poe Vigil It’s been nearly three years since an unknown man last...