The English Pen has launched The Bigger Read, an effort to trump the dumbed down Big Read contest held by the BBC. The BBC plans to rebut with The Biggest Read. One thing’s for certain. This contest is going to involve more than a few testicles. (via Literary Saloon)
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (Bat Segundo interview with Bissell)
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious. 
It’s not available to be read online but James Wood’s The Broken Estate has an excellent essay on Hamsun that sent me off in search of his work. (Actually, all the Wood essays are top-flight, but I am a fan.)
Start with “Hunger.” It’s one of the finest depictions of self-sacrifice and the downsides of sticking whole-heartedly to a universe of one. Particularly with the way that Hamsun captures the narrator’s desperation and self-delusions.
And is this the Wood essay you’re referring to?
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/24/wls-wood.php
If so, it’s interesting that Wood puts “Hunger” in the same classically comical canon as Don Quixote. Hamsun’s dark edge is fascinating in the way he paints the narrator’s struggle as both absurd and all-too-tragic.
No, that’s not the essay, although it hits some of the same marks. The essay in Broken Estate is New York Review of Books length – but it focuses on Hunger, which is on my shelf.
You can find lots of copies of B.E. on half.com – can’t recommend it highly enough.