Final Dispatch from the Great Mistakes Tour
The third leg of comic Kyle Kinane’s Great Mistakes Tour has been officially documented. This part of Isaac and Kyle’s foray into the expansive American landscape includes Sioux Falls and…
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Sam Riley
474 posts
Sam Riley is an adult who works at McSweeney's.
The (Optimisitic) State of the Book Review
Book reviews sections in newspapers and magazines began shrinking a couple years ago, or being folded into other sections, even disappearing altogether. In 2007, a band of culturally dedicated authors…
Reluctant Readers Gender Breakdown
A recent article in Sunday’s NY Times Book Review breaks down reading habits by gender, reporting that boys read less than girls. This revelation may be surprising given the plethora…
Megatrends Now and Later
It seems like every year there are economic predictions and warnings about the impending doom that is coming or the next big thing to look out for, but what became…
It’s the 2nd Annual 8/26 Day Write-a-thon!
This Friday, August 26th is 8/26 day and your favorite youth literacy nonprofit, 826 Valencia is celebrating with a second annual Write-a-thon! It’s a marathon of writing and it’s happening…
More Multimedia Borges Appreciation
Besides this, here is another, more visually-focused way to appreciate Jorge Luis Borges on the anniversary of his birth, 112 years later. It’s The Mirror Man, a 47-minute documentary on…
The Latest in Censorship
Haruki Murakami was removed from a summer reading list for middle schooler and high school students in one New Jersey school district. Apparently, some of the language in Norwegian Wood…
East Coast Quake Follow Up
That East Coast earthquake happened yesterday and after all the panic and subsequent relief and immediate tweeting, it is now an appropriate time to discuss what would cause such an…
Publishing Vocab
Editors, publishers and critics have their own industry-specific lexicon. People in the industry are used to hearing words like “acclaimed” or saying that a book “brilliantly defies categorization,” but apparently…
NYPD/CIA Scandalous Surveillance
“A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties…
Your Reading List is About to Blow Up!
At the intersection of the literary website and Pandora is your latest decision-making distraction: BookLamp.org. The new site uses an algorithm, taking your bookish preferences and turning them into an…