For your reading enjoyment
2I’ve been coming across a lot of good bookish links this week that you might enjoy too.
- Fear of speaking in front of large crowds? Adam Mansbach shares scenarios that are worse in “Hell is my own book tour” at Salon.com.
- I remember terrible name calling and hurt feelings from team mates when we tried to play the Book Lover’s Edition of Trivial Pursuit at A2’s house (not once, but unwisely twice!). Here are some other “Literary Board Games for Book Nerds.” If I had to be made to play one, I think I’d go with The Shining. (But The Name of the Rose—really?)
- Speaking of A2, she shared this link on the evolving design of the covers for Ian Fleming’s Bond novels (I used to consider these my guilty pleasure) in “60 Years of Spying in Style.”
- The Paris Review ran an interview with a poet from Pittsburgh, born in 1925, whom I hadn’t heard of before: “Jack Gilbert, The Art of Poetry No. 91,” Interviewed by Sarah Fay. It’s a long piece but interesting; I love this particular remembrance:
And you might not think it, but the power of Pittsburgh, the grandeur, those three great rivers, was magnificent. Even working in the steel mills. You can’t work in a steel mill and think small. Giant converters hundreds of feet high. Every night, the sky looked enormous. It was a torrent of flames—of fire. The place that Pittsburgh used to be had such scale. My father never brought home three pounds of potatoes. He always came home with crates of things. Everything was grand, heroic. Everything seemed to be gigantic in Pittsburgh—the people, the history. Sinuousness. Power. Substance. Meaningfulness.
Especially that line “You can’t work in a steel mill and think small.”
Enjoy!
I believe I was told “I am never speaking to you again” with deadly sincerity, which kind of stuck with me whether carried through or not. And as for Clue, I’d never ever played Clue before that night, but I remember liking it, just needing to be coached. A lot.
I don’t remember the hurt of that game, though I do remember how horribly we all did. I remember how badly Clue went though, my excitement and everyone else’s boredom. Which is of course why I’m now voting for Name of the Rose. I also remember thinly veiled threats the first time we played Apples to Apples.