Image: ElectricLit
The Book Booth is a weekly feature at The Political Carnival, relating news, notes, and reflections from the world of books and publishing. It is written by @SeattleDan and SeattleTammy, operators of an on-line bookstore (which you can find here) , who have been in the book business since shortly after the Creation, or close to 6000 years now.
The Book Booth: Happy Fall Edition
The autumn leaves have begun to fall, if my backyard is any indication. I mowed the other day, and I chopped a few of them into little pieces. There is something satisfying about the crunching sounds the leaves make when the mower passes over them. I hope all of you are enjoying the new season.
With the new season, it is time to enjoy the harvest. SeattleTammy looks forward to making good soups, which she does very well, mind you. And with good food, there should be good books. ElectricLit recommends some Good Eating Books!
Do you ever wonder what the Lords of Silicon Valley read? The folks at Wired checked out Marc Andreessen's of Andreessen/Horowitz and were surprised by what they found. Pogo, Peanuts and Kevin Brownlow's cinema history and much more. H/ t to Lucian for the link.
Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist's Library
I've recently been talking about the new Library of America edition of Ursula Le Guin's early novels. It just so happens, that the Paris Review has excerpted Ms. Le Guin's introduction which you can read here.
Ursula LeGuin on Her Work:
The Motherland - Finding—and writing—the worlds where only I had been
I've noticed that as a general rule, people on the political right often lack imagination. They seem not to enjoy reading, the stage, or stories in general. For those of us who do read, we seem to have more sympathetic, even empathetic qualities. There may be good reason for this phenomenon, as Tom Blunt at Signature explains.
How Literary Fiction Teaches Us to be Human
For those of you who'd like a poetry fix, check out the profile in the New Yorker of English poet Alice Oswald by Dan Chiasson. Her work taking off on Homer looks very interesting.
Poetry Fix! Poetry Fix! Get Your Poetry Fix Here!
This link from BuzzFeed is fun. It has over twenty underused words. And here I thought absquatulate meant running off with the bosses wife. I was close.
Give Those Underused Words Some Exercise!
Sadly we lost two fine writers this past week. W. P. Kinsella was a prolific Canadian writer, often using baseball as a touchstone. His Shoeless Joe is a masterwork, turned into the good Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams. Alas, I'm unconvinced that Joe Jackson deserves a shot at the Hall of Fame, but the novel has some wonderful moments.
Shoeless Joe Author Kinsella Has Left Us
And playwright Edward Albee, who penned Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, among many other works, passed away at 88.
Edward Albee Has Also Moved On to The Next Adventure
Enjoy this new season and our hopes that your harvests have been good to you. Sit back, relax and read a good book. And let us know what works you are loving this weekend.