Posts by author
Lauren O’Neal
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How Well Do You Know Library of Congress Subjects?
Which book can be comprehensively defined by the keywords “married people,” “college teachers,” and “New England”? What about “totalitarianism” and “London (England)”? See how well you can categorize bookshelves with this quiz about Library of Congress subjects from The Toast.
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An Entirely New Type of Poetry Slam
“Code poetry has been around a while, at least in programming circles, but the conjunction of oral presentation and performance sounded really interesting to us,” said Werner. Added Kagen, “What we are interested is in the poetic aspect of code…
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#candylit Sweetens the Twittersphere
This past weekend, an event of historical import occurred: the #candylit hashtag on Twitter. Started by Lincoln Michel with a “Fall of the House of Gushers” pun, it combined book titles with the names of confectionery treats. BuzzFeed Books rounded up…
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Sherlock Holmes Enters the Public Domain
Excellent news: Your X-rated Sherlock/Watson slashfic now has the blessing of the American legal system! Well, sort of. A US district court has ruled that, with the exception of a few stories published after 1923, the material from Arthur Conan…
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Hilton Als on the Vice Podcast Show
If you didn’t get the chance to take part in our Rumpus Book Club chat with White Girls author Hilton Als, don’t worry. Read the transcript, and then check out his interview with Reihan Salam for the Vice Podcast Show. They have…
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Independent Bookstores Might Just Make It After All
Rumors of independent bookstores’ demise may be at least somewhat exaggerated. On the day before Christmas, New York’s iconic Strand Book Store tweeted that it just had the “best sales day in the history of 86 years at the store”!…
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Pulp Fiction from South India
But as I turned over the glossy, hardbound book in my hands, the seductive, bespectacled young woman with jasmine in her hair and an unusually large revolver in her hand beckoned with a look that both allured and mystified. What,…
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100-Year-Old Photos Found in Antarctica
Well, this is cool (pun not intended but definitely enjoyed): twenty-two 100-year-old photos were recently found in a block of ice in Antarctica. More accurately, they’re “exposed but unprocessed negatives,” believed to be taken by Arnold Patrick Spencer-Smith as part of…
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Go to the Library Without Leaving Your House
If you liked learning about fore-edge paintings, you’ll love the New York Public Library’s Tumblr. And the Smithsonian Libraries’ Tumblr. And the University of Iowa’s Special Collections & University Archives Tumblr. And all the other library blogs linked in this MetaFilter post,…
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The Doris Lessing Movie Adaptation No One Talks About
Amanda Shubert, who recently interviewed Ronee Blakley for the Rumpus, has a thought-provoking piece up about Adore, the film adaptation of Doris Lessing’s novella “The Grandmothers.” It’s a challenging story in either format, dealing as it does with “women who sleep…
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Baby Panda Bears!
We’ll just leave this here: A Smithsonian magazine piece on the National Zoo’s baby pandas. And it’s by Susan Orlean. And it includes photos.
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More on Nashville‘s Brilliant Prescience
If you enjoyed Amanda Shubert’s recent Rumpus interview with singer, songwriter, actress, and Nashville star Ronee Blakley, you should definitely take a look at this essay about the film’s new Criterion Collection release. Written by Shubert’s Critics at Large colleague Kevin…