paper trail

Sep 20, 2011 @ 4:00:00 am

From The Phantom Tollbooth

New York, London, Los Angeles, and now Toronoto: The Toronto Review of Books releases its inaugural issue. Read Bookforum's interview with founding editor Jessica Duffin.

The Phantom Tollbooth turns fifty.

The New Yorker’s Macy Halford tests Goodreads’ new recommendation algorithm by entering the books currently on her desk, including The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, Within the Context of No Context, by George W.S. Trow, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, by Michel Foucault, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, and Alison Bechdel’s The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For. Results are predictably funny.

Speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison is suing to stop the release of Justin Timberlake’s new movie, In Time. The movie, which Ellison claims is based off of one of his short stories, is set in a "dystopian corporate future in which everyone is allotted a specific amount of time to live."

For maximum fun, listen to Simon Reynolds talk with Jesse Thorn about his new book, Retromania, on the Sound of Young America podcast.

At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bookforum pal Sara Marcus considers Ellen Willis, and the challenges writers face in trying to escape “the music ghetto.”

Read Bookforum editor Chris Lehmann’s Harper’s cover story on how Mormon economics shape the G.O.P. [Behind paywall!].