As the centenary of Simone de Beauvoir’s birth draws nigh, English-speaking readers still don’t have access to an accurate translation of The Second Sex. At least Jonathan Cape intends to publish one; it’s in the works. (Little thanks to Knopf, which reportedly accepted the project in 2000 but became “so fed up with feminists saying how terrible the translation was” . . .
On the PEN World Voices 2008 program: The Three Musketeers Reunited, featuring Eco, Rushdie, and Vargas Llosa, on 5/2. (Via.)
“This is my Bible. I am what it says I am.” Chris Lehmann reads health-and-wealth preacher Joel Osteen’s Become a Better You.
Hilary Mantel on Diary of a Bad Year: “Some writers begin by lulling their readers, some by shocking them. J.M. Coetzee begins by starting an argument.”
At Jezebel, Lizzie Skurnick revisits beloved children’s and YA books for “a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look.”