Book News, In Brief

Flashlight Worthy has picked their 5 Favorite Books for Poetic Seduction. I'm guessing Neil Strauss' The Game was a close 6th.


The funny thing about classic literature is, even the so-called serious stuff is occasionally silly. Over at NPR, Jack Murnigham slogged through Moby Dick, Ulysses, and The Sound and the Fury, looking for laughs.


J.R.R. Tolkien's son, Christopher, says that most LOTR fans will be "put off" by the poetic form of his father's latest posthumous release, Sigurd and Gudrún. That's cool, though. Li'l Tolkien also thinks his pop would've been "puzzled," "baffled," and "indignant" about today's LOTR fans.


Preparing for the West's inevitable demise, Canadian translator Musharraf Ali Farooqi has started a publishing imprint devoted solely to literature translated from Urdu (a major language in both Pakistan and India). The Urdu Project's first release? Muhammad Husain Jah's 125 year old, 8,000 page fantasy epic, Hoshruba. Can you say, 'guaranteed bestseller'?