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GALLERY

post from About Last Night on 20 November 2008 04:29:00 PM. © About Last Night

John Marin: Ten Masterworks in Watercolor (Meredith Ward, 44 E. 74, up through Dec. 20). Ten important works on paper by the pioneering American modernist whose virtuosity in the watercolor medium remains unrivaled. Some are from Marin's estate, others from private collections, and most are familiar only to Marin specialists. A rare opportunity to view a great American painter at the peak of his powers (TT).

Read The Full Article:
http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/2008/11/gallery_9.html

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A Random Night

post from bookgirl's nightstand on 20 November 2008 04:20:56 PM. © bookgirl's nightstand

The Barnes & Noble were my mystery group meets hosted an event tonight with a representative from Random House. It was so much fun I’m so glad I had the chance to go.Book group members were invited to hear about books that would be great for discussion, books that will be released soon and there [...]

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http://www.bookgirl.net/?p=1114

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Advice

post from A Different Stripe on 20 November 2008 03:47:00 PM. © A Different Stripe

"Wear the old coat and buy the new book."
?Austin Phelps, 1820-1890, Congregational minister and educator

via The Regulator Bookshop of Durham, NC, which is doing its part this holiday season by hosting a local crafts and food bazaar every weekend through Christmas.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/typepad/nyrb/classics/~3/460012956/advice.html

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Exclusive Interview with NBA Winner Annette
Gordon-Reed

post from mediabistro.com: GalleyCat on 20 November 2008 03:23:45 PM. © mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Annette Gordon-Reed won the 2008 National Book Award for Nonfiction last night, defying the predictions of GalleyCat readers.

At the ceremony, we caught up with Reed to discuss her NBA-winning work of nonfiction, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. At the end of the interview, the celebrated author spoke about her next two writing project--ambitious follow-ups to her award-winning history.

To see more of GalleyCat's video coverage of the NBA's, check out: Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell on the economy and NBA Poetry winner Mark Doty on his upcoming book.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

Read The Full Article:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/awards/exclusive_interview_with_nba_winner_a
nnette_gordonreed_101330.asp?c=rss

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Nameless heroes

post from Light reading on 20 November 2008 03:10:00 PM. © Light reading

Some great bits of language in the appealingly named Fuschia Dunlop's New Yorker piece on Chinese restaurateur Dai Jianjun:

?You just can?t trust the ingredients you buy in the markets,? Dai told me, battling his way through the undergrowth. ?Vegetables laced with chemicals. Fake birds? nests held together by glue. Even hairy crabs from Yangcheng Lake?most of them are farmed elsewhere and simply made to ?take a shower? in the famous lake before they go to market.?

And again:

A waitress entered and laid a soup tureen on the table. She announced the dish as wu ming ying xiong??nameless heroes.? Steam rose from a milky broth, in which a carp rested in the silky folds of bamboo-pith fungus. Scarlet wolfberries and sliced scallion were scattered on top, like jewels on pale flesh. The waitress ladled the soup into small bowls, each with a piece of fish and a lacy morsel of fungus. The liquid was xian, richly savory, replete with delicious fish flavors, and yet the fish itself was not overcooked. Dai explained that this was a gongfu cai, an ?art? dish, whose elaborate preparation was invisible in the simplicity of its final appearance. Small crucian carp were used for the broth, simmered for their flavor and then discarded. The whole carp in front of us had been poached, briefly, in their stock. ?So you see,? Dai said, ?the vanished crucian carp are the dish?s ?nameless heroes.? ?

Read The Full Article:
http://jennydavidson.blogspot.com/2008/11/nameless-heroes.html

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post from on 20 November 2008 02:23:40 PM. ©

PotterCast 173: Are You There God? It's Me, Harry[...]

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http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/

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Ten Days To Go!

post from mediabistro.com: GalleyCat on 20 November 2008 02:23:00 PM. © mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

As GalleyCat recovers from the National Book Awards, we should all cheer on the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) writers pounding away this November. These writers have braved a depressing recession and chased their dream of writing 50,000 words in a month.

So far, NaNoWriMo writers have produced some 930,596,374 words. Assuming the average novel is 75,000 words, that's nearly 12,500 novels collectively written in 20 days.

Author Jessica Burkhart offered GalleyCat readers some encouragement:

"In 2006, at 20 years old, I participated in NaNo and wrote my first novel. I blogged about NaNo and that I was searching for an agent. In late December of that year, an agent stumbled upon my blog and asked to read my manuscript. I signed with her and she quickly sold my NaNoNovel as part of a four-book series to Simon & Schuster."

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

Read The Full Article:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/contests/ten_days_to_go_101322.asp?c=rss

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Random House USA Cancels Pensions for New
Employees

Pensions frozen at Random House Inc and eliminated for future hires
Thursday November 20, 2008.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The country's largest trade publisher, Random House Inc., has frozen the pensions of its current employees and eliminated them for future hires, the latest cuts in an industry hit by declining sales and anticipating, at best, a difficult 2009.

"Effective Dec. 31, benefits in the Random House, Inc. Pension Plan will no longer grow -- but they will not be reduced," spokesman Stuart Applebaum said in a statement released Thursday in response to a query from The Associated Press.

Applebaum added that, effective Jan. 1, no new employees "will be enrolled in the Random House, Inc. Pension Plan." The company will continue to offer matching funds, up to 6 percent, for 401k plans.

"Random House has always been a cost-conscious company, and particularly so in these financially troubled times," he said when asked if future cuts were possible.

Applebaum said talk of cutting pension had been going on for years, although changes at Random House have been expected since Markus Dohle replaced Peter Olson in May as chairman of the publisher's worldwide operations. "Mr. Dohle's planning and discussions about the company's future has been and continue to be very interactive at all levels of the company worldwide," Applebaum said.

Random House is owned by Germany media company Bertelsmann AG.

A Random House division, the Doubleday Publishing Group, announced last month that it had laid off 16 people. "South Beach Diet" publisher Rodale Inc. recently laid off 14 from its book division.

Earlier Thursday, Barnes & Noble Inc. reported a larger-than-expected quarterly loss. The superstore chain reduced its full-year sales and earnings forecasts, sending its shares down sharply, and said it would cut the number of new stores opening in 2009.

Sales for B&N stores 15 months or older, a key indicator of a retailer's health, fell 7.4 percent from last year.

"A significant drop-off in customer traffic and consumer spending impacted our business in the third quarter," Chief Executive Steve Riggio said in a statement.

Two other leading publishers, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, have reported low earnings in recent weeks, citing an especially weak market for older, "backlist" books.

"What I think is happening is that you would have somebody who would go into a store and buy a front list title, and then ... buy a second book. And now they aren't buying that second book," says Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy.

Carrie Kania, who heads the Harper Perennial paperback imprint at HarperCollins, says that while classics such as "To Kill a Mockingbird" remain popular, she has seen a drop for what she calls "the middle backlist, a book that came out 10 years ago that isn't in the news, that's a little off the radar.

"You might have an author with 10-12 books and it's harder now to get people to go for that fourth or fifth book," Kania said. "People are being more careful now. They aren't going as deep into an author's work."

Read The Full Article:
http://bibliobiography.blogspot.com/2008/11/random-house-cuts-pensions-for.html

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The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo

altimage If you’ve been following the news on the Democratic Republic of Congo lately, you’ll find my client’s film The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo particularly relevant, which is why HBO is screening it tonight (follow HBO link for details).

Here’s the synopsis:

Since 1998 a brutal war has been raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Over 4 million people have died. And there are the uncountable casualties: the many tens of thousands of women and girls who have been systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army.

The world knows nothing of these women. Their stories have never been told. They suffer and die in silence. In The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo these brave women finally speak.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chekhovsmistress/~3/459836448/

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David Hume and Standards of Taste

David Hume.Further to my thinking about the ‘value’ of ranking ‘good’ and ‘bad’ literature based on agreed upon aesthetic criteria, I came across this from the admirably lucid Theodore Gracyk:"Hume’s other writings on art and taste indicate that the relevant pleasures are not immediate responses to objects so much as "impressions of reflection." In [...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nigelbeale/yxOu/~3/464178884/