Jack Romanos, president of Simon and Schuster is retiring, and Carolyn Reidy is in. Looks like Romanos will have quite a bit of spare time on his hands. Might we suggest whiling away the hours with Literary Rejections On Display? We've been hooked for the last couple of weeks: reading about someone else's failures is about as comforting as a good cup of boiling tea in an overly air-conditioned office (the Phoenix HQ has been freezing us out all week). But in between shivering and ordering extra-hot lattes from the Starbucks around the corner, we finished reading Karma and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi, and it floored us. In keeping with the Indian theme, we might try The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy next, although Sense and Sensibility and Dalia Sofer's The Septembers of Shiraz is also on our list. Of course, toting all that around on the T might be sort of impossible, so perhaps we'll have to get all cutting-edge and switch to e-books. Didn't someone predict that, like, everyone would be reading e-books by now? Yeah, so much for that. Although we do kinda enjoy the idea of being able to read a comic book on our cell phone. Avril Lavigne's manga will probably be next. Oh, anyone planning to hit up Eric Schaeffer's Boston University Barnes & Noble reading on Sept 13? We'll give you a prize if you quote him something from the Gawker tirade during the Q&A.

9/7/2007 11:08:12 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1992. I finished the first book in the two-part series about a month ago in preparation for a visit to Yad Vashem last week. Maus is shocking, tragic, funny, and brutally eye-opening. It's the most beautifully told, gripping account of the Holocaust I've ever read, and I've been reading about it all my life.

Just happened upon this Morning Edition piece about how MAD magazine influenced Spiegelman's comic book take on his father's personal survivor story.

Listen to it here, and read excerpts from Maus here.

Accoding to his Pantheon bio, Spiegelman is currently working on the libretto and the sets for a new opera about the history of comics entitled "Drawn to Death: A Three Panel Opera" with composer Phillip Johnston. Perhaps The Rejection Collection will figure into that somehow?

Below, a panel from Maus via Pantheon Graphic Novels:

7/26/2007 10:23:30 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |