Odds & Ends

There are always lots of interesting things going on in the world of reading. Here are a few odds and ends of articles and news bites that are on the minds of readers everywhere:

• Today is the 100th anniversary of the opening of the New York Public Library. With a main reading room stretching for two city blocks and a complete open door policy, the NYPL is truly an icon of the literary world. In all it houses over 50 million items, including such treasures as Christopher Robin Milne's original stuffed animals, a letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra, and a Gutenberg Bibe. This number is surpassed only by the Library of Congress and the British Library. Read more about the centennial celebration here.
• Guardian UK Books talks with writer Umberto Eco and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere on their new book This is Not the End of the Book. In it they confess that there are great books that even they have decided to lay aside and read in another life: "There are books on our shelves we haven't read and doubtless never will, that each of us has probably put to one side in the belief that we will read them later on, perhaps even in another life. The terrible grief of the dying as they realise their last hour is upon them and they still haven't read Proust."
• Over at The Wall Street Journal, Cynthia Crossen is answering a reader's question on a phenomenon that has been around in literature for awhile, but has only recently begun to have a name: the "unreliable narrator".
• Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are teaming up to bring us a motion capture film version of the wildly popular (in Europe, anyway) Tintin stories. Starring Jamie Bell and Daniel Craig, The Adventures of Tintin will be hitting theaters this December. We'll see if this glossy, 3D adaptation will interest more Americans in these nostalgic stories by Belgian author Herge.

Anyway, there are some tidbits from the literary world today. Is there anything cool going on in your literary life? Finished a good book, read an interesting article, or watched a good adaptation recently? Feel free to share!