blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

In 2004, Mark Eisner's edited bilingual collection of Pablo Neruda's poems, The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, was published by City Lights. It has gone on to receive much acclaim, and indeed is the bestselling edition of Neruda's poetry in America. Eisner is currently at work on an important documentary on the late Chilean poet, The Poet's Calling. We had the opportunity to interview him about the process of editing and translating Neruda, as well as the work he has been doing on the documentary film that's currently in production.

When talking about literary families, everyone knows about the Brontës. But while the Brontës may be one of the most famous literary families, they’re certainly not the only family of wordsmiths across the literary landscape. Here are just a few examples of lesser-known clans with a proclivity for pen and paper, and who also help illustrate that age-old question: Can the ability for great storytelling be taught, or is it simply in the blood?

There’s only one London, right? While major urban centers throughout the world might occupy only one location on a map, many residents of global cities might argue that there’s more than one version of the place in which they live. One such spot might be Zadie Smith’s London. Most of her works of fiction take place in the London she grew up in — an area of North London that’s not typically frequented by tourists coming to see the Thames River, Buckingham Palace, or Big Ben. As such, reading Smith’s novels provides us with a different kind of tour of London that’s not circumscribed by notable landmarks but instead by fictional Londoners in the contemporary metropole.

Garnering more critical acclaim than many contemporary writers, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has already had one of her novels adapted to film with an all-star cast, and another is in the works. Are book-to-film adaptations all that we hope for when we love a novel? For instance, when we encounter a compelling text, is the power of the book enlivened or diminished on the silver screen? In recent years, a number of works of postcolonial fiction have been adapted for the cinema, such as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane. In general, they haven’t done too well with critics or audiences. Can we expect something different from Adichie’s works when they hit theatres?

"If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!"
- William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray, best known for novels like Vanity Fair and Catherine, did not make a prudent marriage. He seriously considered marrying for money, but when he met Isabella Shawe, he married for love. Although theirs can’t be considered a marriage that was full of happiness and good times, it certainly spurred him to prolific writing. For most of his career he had to "write for his life," as he called it, not only to support his family, but also to pay for the treatments and care required for his wife who fell into so deep a depression, she was often catatonic.

Historical fiction, of which biographical fiction is a subset, can in many ways be considered one of the earliest literary trends.Writing about history, sometimes real and sometimes imagined, connects Homer’s Iliad (c750 BC) to Shakespeare’s history plays to Robert Coover’s The Public Burning (1977). In the case of the earliest English language novels, it was popular to market even fantastical novels as being the stuff of historical or biographical truth.Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), for instance, were presented to contemporary readers in the style of biography, journalism, and recovered documents.In this way, it is easy to take a blasé attitude toward biographical fiction. To do so, however, would be to tragically overlook the literary contributions of Irving Stone.

It’s how Inside the Actor’s Studio host James Lipton concludes each interview. A handful of questions adopted from famed French interviewer and journalist Bernard Pivot, Lipton’s inquiries are designed to not only entertain but also probe the psyches of his guests to discover what turns them on, turns them off, moves them, and makes them tick. Lipton gives a nod to Pivot as his inspiration for the final segment of each episode, and he also briefly acknowledges Marcel Proust — author of the seminal novel À la recherche du temps perdu, or In Search of Lost Time — who popularized the questionnaire in the early part of the 20th century and from whom the questionnaire received its name. 

To know The Little Prince is to love The Little Prince. For those of us already familiar with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's great novella, these quotes will be a charming walk down a familiar path. For those as yet unfamiliar with this children's classic, we hope the following quotes will whet your appetite for more. Read. Enjoy. Then let us know which of your favorites we missed!

Considered by some to be the most significant 18th century writer in French letters, Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau changed the realm of political thought and moral psychology. As an original thinker, Rousseau inevitably made enemies and aroused suspicions in his day. His writings forced him into exile and earned him numerous rivals, including Voltaire. Rousseau became so paranoid that he could no longer distinguish the real from the imagined. A man of reason can give way to the most irrational of fears: This is one of the many contradictions that punctuates Rousseau's remarkable life.

Is Mahatma Gandhi the ultimate figure from the Indian subcontinent to represent nonviolence in the quest for justice and equality? Although popular history generally upholds Gandhi to be a figure of veneration, particularly when we think about the long and arduous path to decolonization and independence, the Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy recently accused Gandhi of class prejudice. Let’s take a closer look at the events that led to Roy’s accusation.