WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Scientists turn nuclear waste into diamond batteries.
Johns Hopkins researchers question controversial study linking Sturgis rally to COVID-19 spike CBS
In The Observer Alex Preston has a Q & A with Elena Ferrante-translator Ann Goldstein: 'I try to make it really clear that I am not Elena Ferrante'
Readers Are Turning, In Droves, To Octavia Butler’s Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
There’s nothing like it – and it feels eerily prescient, too. “The Earthseed books are instructional in a way that other apocalypse fictions are not. They are not prepper fiction, though reading them will teach you a thing or two about go bags and the importance of posting a night watch. According to people who love the books, myself included, they offer something beyond practical preparations: a blueprint for adjusting to uncertainty.” – Slate
Rocky sea cliffs with houses and Bondi Beach, Australia
ANDREW MERRY / GETTY IMAGES
Life is a permanent holiday at Maroubra and Bondi Beach, a quintessential picture postcard of the Australian lifestyle.
As the city of Lisbon has announced, Alberto Manguel is donating his 40,000-volume library to them, to be the core of the planned Centro de Estudos de História da Leitura ('Center for the Study of Reading'), which looks very promising; the hand-over protocol us to be signed later this week, on 12 September, at the Lisbon Book Fair.
Manguel's enormous library is legendary -- see a few pictures in his report from over a decade ago in The New York Times, when it was just A 30,000-Volume Window on the World -- and he has written about it (and other libraries) extensively; see, in particular, his book on Packing My Library-- future editions of whcih will now hopefully come with an additional chapter about this new chapter .....
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Léon Bloy's The Woman Who Was Poor which was actually re-issued not too long ago, by St. Augustine's Press.
Bloy based one of his characters in this on himself, that of Cain Marchenoir, and mentions here that: "The odd personality of Marchenoir has been described at length in another book, so it would be superfluous to limn him over again in these pages". That novel is now finally also available in English, as The Desperate Man, from Snuggly Books; I hadn't realized it was out, but now definitely want to take a look; see also their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk
Sunday Perusal of Scandinavian Chairs
