The Cover Design Exams
A heart, the source of empathy, or at least what we use as a visual for love, was an initial starting point. As a nod to the medical part of…
A Yelp, of Sorts
The Morning Review is doing a series of restaurant reviews by writers which isn’t exactly a series of restaurant reviews. This is exactly the criteria: “1) it is a restaurant…
Dear Alice
Alice Munro’s birthday was last week (happy belated, Alice!). She’s also Elliott Holt‘s favorite writer, and over at Literary Mothers, Elliott wrote a beautiful letter to her: Your stories provide deeply…
Learning Curves
Have you ever regretted the way in which you once wrote? In this week’s New York Times “Bookends” column, Anna Holmes and Leslie Jamison take this question on. A few early…
Summer Reading List
If you’re looking for independent bookstores to visit on your Southern road trip—or, in the absence of a road trip, want to know what Southern booksellers are reading this summer—then…
This American Life, Moving Forward
Ira Glass loses his voice; Ira Glass gets it back: The New York Times reports on This American Life’s risky split from PRI and venture into the world of independent programming (and don’t…
The House Sitter
If a novel depicted house sitters’ lives, its scenes would depict the complex relationship between the homeowner and sitter, the way trust is built between strangers in such an intimate…
Elevator Protocol
Elevators, that common denominator of human anxiety, have a long history. David Trotter reviews Lifted: A Cultural History of the Elevator by Andreas Bernard: That’s what elevator protocol is for. Or so we…
For Sale: Wallace Stevens Home
The distinct quietness of Wallace Stevens’s life—modernist, insurance salesman, writer of The Emperor of Ice Cream—is almost as famous as his poetry. Now! His 1920s Colonial home is for sale in…
Before QWERTY
Before life on the iPad keypad there was life on the QWERTY computer keypad, and before that, the architecture of the typewriter. Dan Piepenbring reports on the history of the typewriter which…
Applause, Applause
Is there, perhaps, something in your life which begs applause? Or maybe you want to help break a world record, or affirm strangers, or do you just like clapping? Rumpus…