The New Republic’s Isaac Chotiner picks a with fight with Americanah author Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche by dubbing her an “insufferable interviewee.”
Guillermo del Toro is in talks with Charlie Kaufman about writing the screenplay for the directors upcoming adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. As del Toro told the Daily Telegraph, “Charlie [Kaufman] and I talked for about an hour-and-a-half and came up with a perfect way of doing the book. I love the idea of the Trafalmadorians [the aliens of Slaughterhouse-Five]—to be ‘unstuck in time.’”
At Flavorwire, Jason Diamond evaluates the growing genre of “Brooklynsploitation”—novels that lazily pick up “every bad Brooklyn stereotype.”
A twelve-foot fiberglass sculpture of Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice rose out of a lake this week as part of a temporary installation in London’s Serpentine Lake. The artwork takes its inspiration from a scene in a 1995 TV adaptation of the novel (it wasn’t in the book) in which a white-shirted Mr. Darcy, played by Colin Firth, emerges from a lake. According to the AP, the scene “helped turn Firth into a sex symbol and is regularly voted among Britain’s most memorable TV moments.” The sculpture will stay in London for several months before going on tour around England, and the Independent has put together a short video of viewers’ reactions.
With all the Bolaño books being translated into English, a guidebook to the author’s oeuvre is essential. Thankfully, The Millions has now provided one, dividing his books between “essential,” “merely excellent,” and “necessary for completists only.”
Goodreads has revealed its list of the top “most abandoned books,” splitting the list between classics and airport purchases. In the first category, Catch-22 ranks at the top, followed by Lord of the Rings, Ulysses, and Moby Dick, while Eat, Pray, Love, the Fifty Shades of Gray series and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo fall into the latter. Goodreads compiled the results by surveying their readers.