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.
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.
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?
London Review of Books (LRB) – December 9, 2022: Among the Ancients, with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones, which we’ll be re-running from January next year. With a new episode each month, Among the Ancients will consider some of the greatest works of Ancient Greek and Roman literature, from Homer to Horace. In this sample Emily and Tom discuss the Iliad.
A sample from the first episode of the Close Readings series from Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones.
Dating to the ninth century B.C., Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it coexists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace.
An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art displays the extravagant Tudor taste for jewels, artworks, tapestries, and other finery.
The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, October 10, 2022–January 8, 2023; the Cleveland Museum of Art, February 26–May 14, 2023; and the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, June 24–September 24, 2023
Colm Tóibín on the Art of Fiction: “No matter what you do in a novel there’s a secret DNA of whatever it is that you’ve suffered.” N. Scott Momaday on the Art of Poetry: “I was writing lines that looked like lines of poetry, recollecting my early days on the reservation, but I didn’t know the difference between a spondee and a dactyl.”
@Shakespeare_Co Podcast, December 2, 2022: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Special Podcast! To celebrate our exclusive S&Co edition of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Adam is joined by Krista Halverson, S&Co Publishing Director, and artist @neiljgower to discuss this classic of French literature.
Boomers Daily 