The Daily Rumpus
Get Overly Personal Emails
From Stephen Elliott
If you’re feeling a little queasy about Amazon’s buyout of Goodreads, Book Riot has compiled a list of alternative book-based social networks.
A few of them seem defunct, and one is actually also owned by Amazon, but some, especially the ones still in beta, look very promising.
...moreStrunk and White’s Elements of Style has a soft spot in all our hearts, but some of its rules—no adverbs, an incorrect definition of passive voice—are a little…idiosyncratic.
If, as Constance Hale says, the point of grammar is to produce better writing, rather than squeezing words into an airtight mathematical equation, Strunk and White aren’t always super helpful.
...moreEmbrace those subway tears, urban commuters!
Busses and trains are great places to read, but how do you cope when you’re on a crowded train making limited stops and the book you’re reading causes those tear ducts to flood? Preeti Chhibber at BookRiot has some anecdotes and solutions of her own on how to play it cool when literature takes you for an emotional ride.
...moreYou know what Ernest Hemingway looked like and what his writing sounded like—but what did he smell like?
Inspired by a perfume on Etsy called “Dead Writers,” Book Riot’s Amanda Nelson imagines scents named after various canonical authors.
Our favorites include Flannery O’Connor (“Church incense, soap, vanilla, ginger”) and Edgar Allen Poe (“Poppies, absinthe, sandalwood, and mold”).
...more