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  1. Quote

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    Perhaps it’s because comics are still considered juvenile reading matter in some quarters that the Daily Mail feels the need to ponder whether Batman is gay, but it’s like it’s never heard of Frederic Wertham, the psychologist whose 1950s book Seduction of the Innocent prompted Nazi-style comic burnings by petrified parents after its observations along the line of: “Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realise a subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism which pervades the adventures of the mature Batman and his young friend Robin.

    Gay superheroes: Holy cow! Why is everyone in a hurry to out Batman?

    (Source: )

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    In an interview with the Guardian last year, Sendak said that the term “children’s illustrator” annoyed him, since it seems to belittle his talent. “I have to accept my role. I will never kill myself like Vincent van Gogh. Nor will I paint beautiful water lilies like Monet. I can’t do that. I’m in the idiot role of being a kiddie book person,” he said. Maurice Sendak, American born author of Where the Wild Things Are, has died at the age of 83.

    In an interview with the Guardian last year, Sendak said that the term “children’s illustrator” annoyed him, since it seems to belittle his talent. “I have to accept my role. I will never kill myself like Vincent van Gogh. Nor will I paint beautiful water lilies like Monet. I can’t do that. I’m in the idiot role of being a kiddie book person,” he said.

    Maurice Sendak, American born author of Where the Wild Things Are, has died at the age of 83.

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  4. Quote

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    It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The one everyone knows (and quotes). Parodied, spoofed, and misremembered, Austen’s celebrated zinger remains the archetypal First Line for an archetypal tale. Only Dickens comes close, with the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light etc…

    Jane Austen
    Pride and Prejudice (1813)

    The 10 best first lines in fiction

    Our guide to the greatest opening lines of novels in the English language, from Jane Austen to James Joyce

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    | 104 notes
    Pride & Prejudice by Jane AustenSonnet 116 Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.       If this be error and upon me proved,      I never writ, nor no man ever loved. In joint celebration of World Book Night and Shakespeare’s birthday, the poet Don Paterson matched a Shakespeare sonnet to each of the 25 specially chosen titles to be given away up and down the country this evening

    Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
    Sonnet 116
    Let me not to the marriage of true minds
    Admit impediments. Love is not love
    Which alters when it alteration finds,
    Or bends with the remover to remove:
    O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
    That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
    It is the star to every wandering bark,
    Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
    Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
    Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
    Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
    But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
          If this be error and upon me proved,
         I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


    In joint celebration of World Book Night and Shakespeare’s birthday, the poet Don Paterson matched a Shakespeare sonnet to each of the 25 specially chosen titles to be given away up and down the country this evening

    (Source: )

  6. Quote

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    This being Urban Dictionary, there are of course lots of naughtier ones, including the most recherche slang for cocaine I’ve ever heard in the form of “Walt Whitman” – he wrote long lines, see? And then there’s the felicitous “Hemingway”, a verb meaning to write an essay under the influence of alcohol. I think he would have been proud of that one. JK Rowling might be less happy about hers: some belletrist has proposed the children’s author’s name as a marvellously inappropriate if semantically sly term for “being under the effects of cannabis (jay) and ketamine (kay): JK Rowling. Ex: Man, I’m rowling so hard right now. Hermione Hoby unpicks how the Urban Dictionary is redefining literature’s biggest names – add your suggestions for the canon redux

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  8. Quote

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    How much power do publishers actually have? It’s not just the ebooks that are in question. The supermarkets and the discount sellers are elbowing their way in on almost everything: pricing, cover design, age banding and even titles. Some might say that publishing houses are beginning to look about as desirable as the pre-fabs we’re featuring in the next series of Foyle’s War.

    So do we need them any more?

    Anthony Horowitz asks ‘do we still need publishers?’

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    Six of the best picture books Whether you like owls, wolves or pirates - there’s a picture book for you on the Waterstones prize shortlist I Don’t Want to be a Pea! by Ann Bonwill & Simon Rickerty (Oxford University Press) Hugo and Bella are off to a fancy-dress party but there’s just one problem - Hugo wants to go as the Princess and the Pea and Bella doesn’t want to be a pea. She’d prefer to be a mermaid. How will they sort it out in time for the party?

    Six of the best picture books

    Whether you like owls, wolves or pirates - there’s a picture book for you on the Waterstones prize shortlist

    I Don’t Want to be a Pea! by Ann Bonwill & Simon Rickerty (Oxford University Press)
    Hugo and Bella are off to a fancy-dress party but there’s just one problem - Hugo wants to go as the Princess and the Pea and Bella doesn’t want to be a pea. She’d prefer to be a mermaid. How will they sort it out in time for the party?

    (Source: )

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