Bluestalking

After Downton Abbey: Parade's End

Featurette

Video: Gillian Flynn author of 'Gone Girl'

 

 

Amazing new invention: the BOOK!

Book Links from 2011: A brief retrospective

I don't keep very good track of all the book and literary-related articles I read through the year, nor the videos I watch, either. Maybe that would be a good 2012 resolution, since by the end of the year I've ingested so much great stuff I wish I could share the best of the best of it with you all. It's a busy, hectic, over-informed world out there; we're all bound to have missed some outrageously good stuff when we're off doing other things.

What I've collected here is no reflection on my 2011 book-related reading. I'm at a loss as to how to go about finding it all again. I suppose I can't, though, without trolling through my "history" on all the computers I've used.

Quick answer: That isn't going to happen.

So, alas and alack, a mere shadow of highlights from the literary world in 2011 is the best I can do.  Hope you enjoy these bits.

 

One of my fave YouTube videos of 2011, from World Book Day:

 

 

Edinburgh International Book Festival, "The Book I Bought Today:"

 

 

Favorite laugh-out-loud book trailers of 2011:

 

 

 

 

Sebastian Barry, on On Canaan's Side and his nomination for the Booker:

 

 

Julian Barnes on winning the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of An Ending:

 

 

Téa Obreht on winning the Orange Prize for The Tiger's Wife:

 

 

Edna O'Brien, "I'm sorry books don't have the same cachet as a pair of jeans:"

 

 

From Mashable: 50 + Sites for Book Lovers.

Articles from The Atlantic:     A Tumultuous Year in Books

                                                            The Phenomenal New York Review of Books

 

The incredible, amazing 2011 upstart the Los Angeles Review of Books

From the Huffington Post: Stereotyping You By Your Favorite Book of 2011

If you care about serious writing and don't know The Millions, you should.

2012: Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Dickens!

 

Dickens' 200th Birthday... Well... Discussed by Sock Puppets (I am so sorry)

 

 

 

The "new" Charlotte Bronte manuscript.

 

In Memoriam: Writers Lost in 2011

(By no means a comprehensive list)

Vanity Fair: Slideshow - In Memoriam of Christopher Hitchens.

 

Vaclav Havel

Russell Hoban

Diana Wynne-Jones

Brian Jacques

Anne McCaffrey

Reynolds Price

Josephine Hart

Christa Wolf

 

So much richness, so little time. What have I missed? Anything you would add?

 

Humiliation: Big Ideas // small book by Wayne Koestenbaum

 

Disclaimer:  I am not responsible for any ruptures of muscular or organ(ic?) body parts as a result of laughing at this video. Nor any acts of spitting out beverages of any sort due to uncontrollable mirth. If you ruin your keyboard it's your fault, dude.

The book.

The author.

The trailer, the legend: