If the human infant is primitive so is its earliest vice, jealousy—probably the most innate vice of all. First comes love, then jealousy, an unholy, uninvited symbiosis. Once there was a great gaunt dog called Griselda, who lay, snarling softly, in an alcove beside the blacksmith’s furnace. With clash and with clangor he shod Bonny […]
In January, 1999, the Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency had issued a memo on its intranet with the subject “Furby Alert.” According to the Post , the memo decreed that employees were prohibited from bringing to work any recording devices, including “toys, such as ‘Furbys,’ with built-in recorders that repeat the audio […]
The following is from Colin Barrett’s debut novel Wild Houses . Barrett grew up in County Mayo. In 2009 he was awarded the Penguin Ireland Prize. His short story collection Homesickness was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and his first collection, Young Skins won the Frank O’Connor International […]
Sonny Rollins circa 1960, when he took a break from performing and recording to focus on himself. THE NOTEBOOKS OF SONNY ROLLINS, edited by Sam V.H. Reese. It is possible to imagine the jazz musician Sonny Rollins’s life as a novel, pitched between realism and surrealism in the manner of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” The […]
The desert estate in Boulder City, Nevada, of the late Terry Goodkind—bestselling author of the epic fantasy series “Sword of Truth”—will be auctioned off later this month. The Goodkind estate, about 30 minutes from Las Vegas, comprises two adjoining properties, each with its own residence: the 6,455-square-foot main house with mountain views and a 1,712-square-foot […]
“In a good puzzle, the sense of authorship and personality is there,” said Anna Shechtman. “My favorite crosswords are ones that bear the mark of a specific human voice.”Credit…Benedict Evans/August Anna Shechtman was 15 when she started building crossword puzzles, and 19 when her first puzzle was published in The New York Times. She later […]
Credit…Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times Dear readers, Could I interest you in a literary field trip to the sauna? The oak branch whipping is optional. The cold plunge is not. Every so often these shocks to the system are tremendously welcome: a way to clear the mind, heart and qi, even if the […]
Entertainment ‘The Idea of You’ soundtrack producer says he wasn’t thinking about One Direction while writing music for August Moon Facebook Email Twitter LinkedIn Copy Link Read in app Paul Bergen/Redferns, Alisha Wetherill/Prime, Dave Pedley/Getty, Tyler Le/BI Savan Kotecha is the lead songwriter and producer behind “The Idea of You” soundtrack. The movie features a […]
The London Book Fair was held over three days in the cavernous Kensington Olympia exhibition center.Credit…Sam Bush for The New York Times Everybody knows that the publishing industry is a rigorously stratified world, characterized by a reverence for hierarchy and a near-fanatical observance of ritual. Or maybe we suspect as much — but for those […]
This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter— sign up here . One hot, fine summer morning, a group of pre-adolescent boys flits to the outskirts of Sweet Water, Nebraska. Splashing through sand-bottomed creeks and tramping over lush meadows, they come to a faded, bumptious, yet appealing white house that sits on the […]
