The Science of Silent Reading
In a New Yorker piece about how women became readers, Joan Acocella describes the moment St. Augustine saw “his mentor, Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, reading without moving his lips”: “His…
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Everything that can’t be categorized but is still wonderful!
Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Important question: what do astronauts eat? Furthermore, what do they listen to to pump them up in the morning? As long as we are talking about space, the weather on…
A trip to The Wilde West
When Oscar Wilde visited America, he met with writers like Walt Whitman and Henry James. But during his trip, his playful quips that many of us have come to love,…
Happy Birthday, Virginia Woolf!
Few writers made greater contributions to literature in the 20th century than Virginia Woolf. Woolf always brought fresh style and perspective to her work, such as the stream of consciousness…
Books and Kickstarter
Thinking about launching your book on Kickstarter? Writer Seth Godin has chronicled his experience with his own book project on Kickstarter and calls it an “experiment in publishing.” Godin says:…
Launch Party for Nick Flynn’s The Reenactments
Come join us tonight (Friday, January 25), at St. Cyprian’s Center to help Nick Flynn launch his new book, The Reenactments! There’ll be a reading, a conversation with Rebecca Solnit, and…
Thou Art More Lovely and More Efficient
As the amount of digital data in the world balloons, so do the costs of storing that data. Some scientists are experimenting with ways to save data on a “device”…
Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
And you may ask yourself, what do birds know about fractal geometry? And you may ask yourself, what do dung beetles understand about the Milky Way? And you may say…
Seeing What Wharton Saw
Jason Diamond writes about how he came to a deeper understanding of Edith Wharton, her work, and the New York neighborhood where she grew up and which Diamond “once tried…
“The Dean of the Clerks”
If the Strand is a palace for books, then Ben McFall is king—of its fiction section, at least. A New York Times profile of McFall discusses his history with, knowledge of,…
“I Hoped My Insurance Company Wouldn’t Find Out”
The Billfold praised Seth Fischer’s essay on mental illness and “empathy and cruelty and survival.” Thanks, The Billfold! We love you back!
The Millions Is Publishing Books Now!
Our friends over at The Millions are branching out: in addition to the features on their fantastic website, they’re starting to publish ebooks. The inaugural volume is called Epic Fail: Bad…