From BBC Magazine, one of literature's great conspiracy theories has new impetus with Sir Derek Jacobi questioning whether William Shakespeare of Stratford really wrote the works associated with him. So what are the arguments for and against this man really being the Bard? The introduction to Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer. A review of Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary by Henry Hitchings (and an excerpt). 175 years after the death of Scotland’s most celebrated novelist, Murray Pittock asks if Walter Scott was an enemy of the Enlightenment, or its champion. A review of Scotland's Books by Robert Crawford. He's seen it all: They don't call him "Famous Seamus" for nothing - the Nobel Prize-winner has won the Whitbread twice and sells more books in Britain than any other living poet.
From Ralph, a review of American Windmills: An Album of Historic Photographs; a review of Past Tents: The Way We Camped by Susan Snyder. A review of Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto, by David Tracey. Climbing trees, and reading about them, is back in fashion. From high in the canopy, Robert Macfarlane finds a new perspective on our need to reconnect with nature, and more on The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane. A review of The Volcano Adventure Guide by Rosaly Lopes. A review of Marshes: The Disappearing Edens by William Burt. A review of The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts. A review of The Most Important Fish in the Sea Menhaden and America by H. Bruce Franklin. A review of Jonathan Miles’s The Wreck of the Medusa: The Most Famous Sea Disaster of the Nineteenth Century.
From HNN, an article on the Saudi Billionaire vs. Cambridge University Press. The University of Michigan Press halts — but may resume — the distribution of Overcoming Zionism by Joel Kovel, a book published in Britain arguing that creation of Israel was a mistake. Thanks, Mr. Nabokov: A trove of rejection files from Alfred A. Knopf Inc. includes dismissive verdicts on the likes of Jorge Luis Borges (“utterly untranslatable”) and Sylvia Plath (“There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice”). Reading serious non-fiction books about current and pressing issues — apart from name-calling books by political hacks and right-wing bitches with flowing Breck-girl hair — is on its deathbed. From Britannica, an article on guilty pleasure books: Mysteries, True Crime Books and Best-Selling “Trash”: Hidden in a Brown-Paper Wrapper. Could you read 100 novels in 100 days?
