Clippings 15: more good news than bad
I’ll start with the bad news. Â More losses have hit the publishing industry—and those of us who care about it. Â The Washington Post has killed its stand-alone, Sunday-issued Book World. Â And the editor-in-chief, executive editor, and children’s review editor at Publishers Weekly have all been laid off. Â I know times are tough for everybody, but I am greatly disturbed by what these decisions indicate about our overall priorities. Â I, for one, intend to keep writing, buying, reading, and reviewing books!
So on to the good news:
 The American Academy of Poetry has released the poster for this year’s National Poetry Month.  The design features a line from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”  Also, in case you need a little inspiration for annual romance day tomorrow, they have also posted a nice collection of love poems.
In honor of John Updike’s recent death, the folks at Books & Culture have dug up this review of his 1996 novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies. Â The reviewer (the byline is inexplicably missing) is novelist Larry Woiwode, whose out-of-print Beyond the Bedroom Wall I have been trying to get my hands on. Â I enjoy reading old reviews that point out good stuff I missed when it first came out (in this case, because I was taking 26 credit hours a semester during my senior year of college!). Â It sounds intriguing. Â Have any of you read it?
Finally, the folks at DailyLit, which I have mentioned here several times, are launching their own Big Read program, starting with a piece inspired by the upcoming Oscars: Â F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Â Sign up here to get it in 11 installments. Â I did, so let’s plan to discuss it here in the near future!
Comments (2)