Morrissey’s Autobiography offers very little first-hand insight into the Smiths, but fans can still learn a great deal about the Mozzer’s singing by noting the many songs he mentions throughout the book. The Manhattanchester blog has compiled a playlist of them all, complete with links to most of the tunes on Spotify. In addition to well-known Morrissey favorites like the New York Dolls, David Bowie, and T. Rex, there are some deep cuts (The Paper Dolls, Blue Mink, and The Pioneers), as well as hits (Diana Ross’s “Reflections”). To hear more about some of his sonic obsessions, check out Morrissey’s Desert Island picks from BBC radio.
Film critic, author, and Bookforum contributor J. Hoberman has been named the video columnist at the New York Times.
The family of Malcolm X has filed suit to stop publication of a diary recounting the activist’s trips to the Middle East and Africa in the year leading up to his assassination. The book is set to be published this week by the Chicago-based Third World Press, but many of Malcolm X’s heirs say the press does not have the right to do so.
A group of NYU students have adapted Tar, a 1983 book of poems by C.K. Williams, into a feature-length film that will be released in December. The book covers Williams’s life from the 1940s to the 1980s, and a number of different actors play the poet—including, unsurprisingly, former NYU film student James Franco.
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There is “a very real possibility” that developers will break ground on a theme park based on the Hunger Games series in the next few years. Moby Lives advises on how to make it as awesome as possible.
Knopf has paid nearly $2 million for a 900-page debut novel by Millions contributor Garth Risk Hallberg. The manuscript, City of Fire, received rapturous reviews from early readers—including Knopf’s Sonny Mehta—and according to Hallberg’s agent, “revolve[s] around a central mystery: what exactly is going on behind the locked steel doors of a derelict townhouse in the East Village, and what might it have to do with the shooting in Central Park in the novel’s opening act?” No publication date has been set.