Posts by author
Caroline Kangas
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“devastatingly poignant with a dash of humor”
Rumpus Book Club member Mandy Boles, a.k.a. The Well-Read Wife, shares her review of October book club selection The Middlesteins. (She even calls our Book Club awesome. What a charmer.)
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“Terrible things happening to orphans over and over again”
That turned out to be a very fortunate pitch for Lemony Snicket. The Chronicle reports on Daniel Handler, San Francisco native and future contributor to Letters for Kids. Topics discussed include: a childhood at the library, Occupy Wall Street, mixed messages from…
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Report from the HMS Bounty
“The risks have become legend, and the language for intense emotions—whether love or loss—are borrowed from the extremes of life at sea.” The Paris Review Daily posts the story of Robin Beth Schaer, a deckhand on the HMS Bounty, the…
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Ebook Bundles Sneak New Authors to Readers
Or, at least, they could if the “humble indie bundle” scheme gains momentum. The Guardian reports on a new method of pay-what-you-can — bundled ebooks that are advertised to “support authors.” But so far the developers have only included well…
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The other other Borges
“The other one, the one called Borges, is the one who skates at the Place de la Concorde on blocks of ice.” A D Jameson at HTMLGiant satirizes Jorge Luis Borges’s short piece “Borges And I” while imagining an explanation for…
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The Blame Game
Scientists have been putting the blame on almost everyone when it comes to climate change and subsequent natural disasters. In L’Aquila, Italy, however, the tables have turned as six scientists and one government official potentially face six years in prison…
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[Male] Trouble
Berlin will be hosting a conference discussing the changing roles of men, titled “Men’s Policies: Contributions to a Gender Equitable Society.” German Family Minister Kristina Schröder explains her reasoning for hosting the event: “We have become so used the monopolistic claims of…
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Ask “What is it?” not “Why is it happening?”
How do we respond to art that seeks us out rather than the other way around? Whether it’s a storytelling mural, a simple tag on a trashcan, or more performative, like that guy in San Francisco who does a one-man…
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Retelling of Captain Ahab’s Manic Quest
Did Herman Melville hook you? As part of an effort to reintroduce the world, as well as introduce new generations, to Moby Dick, artist Angela Cockayne and writer Philip Hoare have organized a 135 day, online reading of the 135 chapters of…
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“The FBI’s antics were a sideshow. The main drama was elsewhere.”
The FBI’s quest to undermine that which it does not understand is nothing new. While Steve Wasserman’s review of Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power by San Francisco Chronicle’s Seth Rosenfeld is largely critical,…
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A Sports Novel from Across the Pond
The Millions explores a different series of sports writing in this in-depth essay on “Cricket’s Rich Literary Vein.” Elizabeth Minkel looks specifically at just a couple books but broadly explains cricket’s logical place in literature: “It seems that the most…
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“necktie popcorn”
Housten Donham, at HTMLGiant, reviews Andrew Choate’s new book Stingray Clapping. While musing on the minimalist and “oddly pleasurable” pieces, Donham also comments on the current poetry scene. As a student of political poetry, he is not against poetry with…