The first issue of LRB volume 45 is now online, featuring Alan Bennett’s diary for 2022, @_jamesmeek on flooding, Anne Enright on Toni Morrison, Jenny Turner @neepmail on Colette, @xlorentzen on Cormac McCarthy and a cover by @Jon_McN.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
James Meek on housebuilding in the aftermath of the 2013 floods
The Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (December 23-30, 2022) features @pgodfreysmith on deer and birds; @LaurenElkin on Sophie Calle; @natsegnit on Craig Brown; a new poem by @glynofwelwyn ; reflections on the BBC at 100; @BorisDralyuk on A. E. Stallings; @irinibus on gifts – and more.
Literary Hub (December 19, 2022) – From 35 lists and from 29 publications (yes, there are even more lists out there, but we’re all going to die some day), tallying a total of 887 books. 84 books were highlighted on 4 or more lists, and those are collated those for you here, in descending order of frequency.
An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception. Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth–all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
Penguin Random House
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs.
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats.
Our first stop: a cheese Danish. Can’t skip breakfast
The Republican leader’s ambition has always been his defining characteristic. Attempting to placate both Trumpists and moderates may lead to his downfall.
Memories of a high-school job at a local seafood restaurant, blurred by time.
It’s our final podcast of 2022 and so, as ever, we’re looking back at the worlds of art and heritage over the past 12 months.
Ben Luke is joined by three members of The Art Newspaper team: Louisa Buck, contemporary art correspondent, Kabir Jhala, acting deputy art market editor, and Ben Sutton, editor in the Americas. Among much else, they discuss the effects of the war in Ukraine,
Just Stop Oil’s activism, unionisation in US museums, the restitution of African and Native American (and Greek) objects, and the NFT crash. They also look at the big art shows and, finally, choose a work of the year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Watch Royal Academy curators Sarah Lea and Professor Dorothy Price discuss the pioneering work of four women making art on their own terms: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Kӓthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin.
Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS – December 16, 2022: Featuring @CLEdwall on Keats; @prospect_clark on Starmer’s Labour; Martin Ivens on Liz Truss; @zoeguttenplan on Orlando at the Garrick; @pottmeister on White Noise; @angusjnicholls on Eckermann and Goethe – and more.
The actress and writer recalls working with French cinema’s enfant terrible.
Such a device could help address climate change and food scarcity, or break the Internet. Will the U.S. or China get there first?
Ecologists are trying to undo environmental damage in rain forests, deserts, and cities. Can their efforts succeed even as Narendra Modi pushes for rapid development?
@nytimesbooks December 11, 2022 features:
The books they read this year that have stayed with them.
At this time of year, the best-selling books for children are all Christmas, all the time. And they’re not even new!
“Ghost Town,” a novel by Kevin Chen, recounts the overlapping — and hotly contested — memories of a Taiwanese family.
Boomers Daily 