California Literary Review

Son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes kills himself: Nicholas Hughes hangs himself at his home in Alaska 46 years after his mother gassed herself. [Guardian]

Women more avid readers of books than men, survey says: A study of reading habits showed almost half of women are ‘page turners’ who finish a book soon after starting it compared to only 26 per cent of men. [Telegraph]

Voices of the past, in shimmering new translations: Ours is a great era of translation. It has been going for at least two decades now, bringing fiction, drama, and especially poetry into English for our times. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Catching up with Lawrence Ferlinghetti: On Tuesday, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti turns 90. Nearly 60 years ago, he came to San Francisco, fell in love with this “small white city,” and soon after co-founded City Lights Books. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Forgotten authors No.28: Matthew Phipps Shiel: HG Wells and MP Shiel were contemporaries, entering and leaving the world within a year of each other, but Wells’s reputation as the father of science fiction has continued to grow, while Shiel has disappeared from bookshelves. [Independent]

Lionel Ziprin, Mystic of the Lower East Side, Dies at 84: For decades, Mr. Ziprin, a self-created planet, exerted a powerful gravitational attraction for poets, artists, experimental filmmakers, would-be philosophers and spiritual seekers. [NYT]

Rising Star: Gaynor Arnold Author: For the second time in a year, first time author Gaynor Arnold finds herself competing against some of the biggest names in fiction for a major literary prize. [Independent]

Book Of A Lifetime: One Hundred Years of Solitude, By Gabriel Garcia Marquez: I can still recall the excitement of stretching out my long undernourished frame on a very doggy sofa in front of the fire and coming upon the exquisite opening sentence (which I am quoting from the very copy I then held, which is, as you can imagine, much the worse for wear): “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” [Independent]

Tears and deals as Stacey’s closes in S.F.: Stacey’s, the largest independent bookseller left in San Francisco, is no more. Once it was four floors of books. Now it is four floors of nearly empty shelves, empty racks, empty tables and empty everything else. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Laura Lippman’s top 10 memorable memoirs: As a former reporter, I have a pesky allegiance to fact, although I recognize that the fragile nature of memory makes it difficult for most writers to produce uncontestable versions of their lives. I am drawn to stories about the quotidian – marriage, friendship, childhood, work, life, death. [Guardian]

China to bring Das Kapital to life on Beijing stage: Producers promise blend of Broadway and Vegas for all-dancing, all-singing adaptation of Marx’s treatise. [Guardian]