Accuracy, tone, and directness: At the New York Times Book Review, Daniel Mendelsohn and Dana Stevens discuss the qualities they look for in a good translation.
Superagent Andrew Wylie talks with the New Republic about his e-publishing initiative, the rise of Amazon (“I am not one of those who thinks that Amazon’s publishing business is an effort marked by sincerity”), and why the London Book Fair is “like being at a primary school in Lagos.”
How is William Boyd’s new James Bond different from the hard-nosed 007 of yore? For one thing, says Boyd, he’s much more in touch with his emotions: “Bond often sheds tears. He cries quite easily; he weeps; if he sees something revolting, like a mangled body, he'll vomit spontaneously. So the Bond of the novels is a totally different being from the Bond of the films, the famous ‘blunt instrument,’ as he was described.”
“For Phyllis, who made me put the dragons in”: Here are thirty book dedications that rival the actual books.
In an interview with Fast Company, Scribd founder Trip Adler speculates that the future of e-reading isn’t on tablets, but on hands-free devices like Google Glass. “Holding a book you’re reading is kind of old school,” he said. “You should be able to just read on your back looking at the ceiling, with the reading experience probably projected in front of [your eyes].” Why is Edgar Allen Poe so often identified as a Baltimorean when his real roots were in Boston? A new book suggests that it might have something to do with his “deep class anxieties, self-destructive personality,” and his uneasy relationship with a “Boston Brahmin crowd whose approval he both craved and disdained.”
