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.
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.
From the longest-running, most influential book review in America, here is its best, funniest, strangest, and most memorable coverage over the past 125 years.
Since its first issue on October 10, 1896, The New York Times Book Review has brought the world of ideas to the reading public. It is the publication where authors have been made, and where readers first encountered the classics that have enriched their lives.
Now the editors have curated the Book Review’s dynamic 125-year history, which is essentially the story of modern American letters. Brimming with remarkable reportage and photography, this beautiful book collects interesting reviews, never-before-heard anecdotes about famous writers, and spicy letter exchanges. Here are the first takes on novels we now consider masterpieces, including a long-forgotten pan of Anne of Green Gables and a rave of Mrs. Dalloway, along with reviews and essays by Langston Hughes, Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, Nora Ephron, and more.
With scores of stunning vintage photographs, many of them sourced from the Times’s own archive, readers will discover how literary tastes have shifted through the years—and how the Book Review’s coverage has shaped so much of what we read today.
Listen to the first chapter of Virginia Woolf’s classic A Room of One’s Own, read by Natalie Dormer.
Download the full audiobook here: https://adbl.co/3grA9PY
A Room of One’s Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf’s blazing writing on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare’s imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman’s need for financial independence and intellectual freedom. This Penguin Classic is performed by Natalie Dormer, best known for her standout role as Queen Margaery in Game of Thrones, as well as her roles in The Hunger Games and Captain America: The First Avenger.
Constantine Peter Cavafy was an Egyptiot Greek poet, journalist and civil servant. His consciously individual style earned him a place among the most important figures not only in Greek poetry, but in Western poetry as well. Cavafy wrote 155 poems, while dozens more remained incomplete or in sketch form.
BY C. P. CAVAFYTRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Discover the stages involved in creating a hand-printed and hand-bound book. This is an example of octavo size, meaning it’s made up of pages that were printed eight to a sheet of paper.
Video timeline: Process at the printers: Arranging metal letters: 00:09 Preparing type: 00:25 Applying ink to the type: 00:32 Pressing paper onto the inked type: 00:40 Process at the binders: Sheets folded and cut: 01:07 Folds hammered: 01:24 Sheets sewn onto bands: 01:28 Rounding the spine: 01:43 Attaching cover boards: 01:56 Clamping the book and trimming pages: 02:20 Endbands sewn: 02:29 Leather cover stuck on: 02:41 Decoration added with hot metal tools: 03:11
Get an inside look at Hemingway and discover why Ken Burns and Lynn Novick chose to explore the complex and iconic writer. Hemingway premieres April 5, 2021 on PBS.
Boomers Daily 