Reading Kick

Choice Reading

Denise Gigante | Lapham's Quarterly | 21st November 2022

New York in the 19C was so full of books and paper that readers felt "lost in a sea of print". The bibliomania exhibited by a pair of literary critic brothers, Evert and George Duyckinck, is a case in point. By the time of Evert's death in 1878, the family library had swelled to over 15,000 volumes of English and American literature — a number that few other private libraries could match (2,294 words)

Kickoff

Jonathan Wilson | Paris Review | 20th November 2022

World Cup curtain raiser. Everything about this tournament, played in Qatar's "balmy winter", feels absurd. "Spectators will emerge from their hotels and the 'Bedouin-style' tents pitched in the desert, or disembark from cruise ships berthed in the gulf, and enter the booze-free stadiums. The infinite air conditioning will hum... Will the crowd have enough lung capacity to overcome it?" (1,565 words)