The Restless Classics edition of Middlemarch is richly illustrated by artist Keren Katz, who has rendered Dorothea Brooke and her provincial 1830s world with over two dozen arresting, strikingly modern papercut illustrations.
Read MoreRebecca Mead
This Week We're...
Watching
“It’s a decent thing to do, and because of it, we will be blessed,” say Mumbai’s white uniformed Dabba Wallas, who bring hundreds of thousands of home-cooked lunches from mothers to sons at office desks all over the city each day. Could this be the next big thing in Brooklyn?
—Jack Saul
Reading
I've always been a sucker for memoiristic books devoted to a single book or author—Nicholson Baker's wonderfully titled homage to Updike, U and I, and Geoff Dyer’s torturous account of his inability to write a book about D.H. Lawrence, Out of Sheer Rage, being two of my favorites. Recently, New Yorker staff writer Rebecca Mead published a perhaps soberer, but no less intriguing, book called My Life in Middlemarch. Having never read Middlemarch, I was dismayed at how enthusiastically received Mead’s book was because it meant that I finally had to tackle George Eliot’s 900-page leviathan. (My resistance was further compromised by Gary Shteyngart, who said it was the best book he’d read recently: “When I finished it I expected a Publishers Clearing House-type van to pull up to my house and some British people to pop out and present me with a medal and a case of sherry.”)
Rather than lug around the leviathan, though, I decided to put my Audible subscription to good use and find an audio version of the book. Of the eight (!) versions available, I chose the edition read by Juliet Stevenson, who has a deep, expressive voice and a remarkable ability to distinguish the (very many) characters by giving them distinct vocal personalities. I listened to the book enraptured--you don’t need me to tell you why it’s good; just trust the canon on this one—on a recent road trip. I’ve got plenty more ahead of me: 900 pages translates to 35 delicious hours of listening.
—Nathan Rostron
Learning
New research in the Netherlands investigates why almost every language, regardless of linguistic origin, uses a variation of the word “huh?” to express a quick need for clarification.
—Alex Sarrigeorgiou