Thanks, The Book Bench
The New Yorker’s Book Bench linked to our interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan. We love you back!
...morePosts Tagged: Book Bench
“Poet of the Disregarded”
At The Book Bench, Teju Cole reviews Across the Land and the Water, the first major volume of poems by W. G. Sebald. Walking us through the collection, Cole sheds light on the progression of Sebald’s poetic voice, technique, and concerns. “He had a feeling for the inanimate, too, for ruins and comminuted landscapes, places that […]
...moreFemale Detectives Then and Now
This Q&A with crime writer Denise Mina touches on office politics, rude women, and the evolution of the female detective. “Now you’ve reached the point where a woman is just a different type of detective. You’re not getting information just because you’re a woman; it’s not your superpower anymore. It’s just a fact about who […]
...moreNew Self-publishing Service
Book Country, an online community created by Penguin this past spring, has announced the addition of a self-publishing component. Here’s an explanation of how it works. “BC offers three publishing “packages” at three prices: $549 for the professionally formatted print/e-book package; $299 for the user-formatted print/e-book package; and $99 for the e-book only package. Each […]
...moreLife Cycle of a Book
An interactive map of the life cycle of a book lets us visualize the publishing process. Hear about each step, from writing to author publicity and everything in between. (Via The Book Bench)
...moreLetter Play
“The challenge is simple: Create an image from a word, using only the letters contained in the word itself—and using only the shapes of the letters, without adding extra parts.” Facebook creative director Ji Lee has released a new collection, titled Word as Image. Here’s a sampling of his creations, along with some tips for […]
...moreYA Characters “Straightened”
Two co-authors of a post-apocalyptic young adult novel discuss how they were offered representation on the condition that they remove or straighten a gay character. “The conversation made it clear that the agent thought our book would be an easy sale if we just made that change. But it doesn’t matter if the agent rejected […]
...moreShould We Fight to Save the Indie Bookstore? (Yes).
Book Bench blogger, Macy Halford is lamenting the downfall of the indie bookstore. Much like the decimation of the video store, there’s a bunch of romance and nostalgia tied up with these places. But does that warrant all the talk of impending doom? And how can we predict what changes are to come? Halford riffs […]
...moreObscure Sorrows
Do you have this? “Ecidivism: n. the habit of closing a browser tab to go do something else, only to absentmindedly return to the website you just left, which is your brain’s way of stress-testing your attention span under a synthetic and highly experimental blend of ones and zeroes, mostly zeroes.” The Dictionary of Obscure […]
...moreWallstreet and Lit Life
What better way to celebrate humanity than acknowledging unexpected cultural overlaps? Wallstreet and the literary life have got some overlaps worthy of discussion. Because sometimes, during tough financial times, consulting a Thomas Wolfe novel for insight is the most helpful thing one can do. “Conditions weren’t sound then. They may or may not be now. […]
...moreArchitecture Fiction
Founded in 2010, in New Orleans, The Hypothetical Development Organization, creates fictional futures for vacant, abandoned buildings or “implausible futures for unpopular places.” To learn more about this visual urban storytelling and the idea of architecture fiction head over to this essay. “The moment that interests me most, I suppose, would be the random passerby who […]
...moreExiled Writers
Writers exiled from their country of origin have a unique relationship to language, freedom and oppression. The context of a homeland functions simultaneously a point of inspiration for the writer and guidance for readers, and so writing about home is a very delicate situation for the exile writer. Marjane Satrapi, author of the graphic novel, […]
...moreHow Do We Spend Our Time?
Last week the government released a survey detailing the time-consuming activities of Americans, broken down in terms of gender, race and age. Time spent working is down due to the lack of jobs and alas, an increase in reading is not compensating for this loss. Instead, TV-viewing time has increased and the rest of the […]
...moreBurning Books
The contemporary burning of books is taking on a new significance. Burning books is an act historically associated with censorship and limited freedoms, a symptom of an overpowering and centralized government or religion. However, these days, the burning of books is “has become as much an act of provocation and one of censorship,” as evidenced […]
...moreLet’s Take a Walk Together
James Yeh writes on the Spontaneous Society for Faster Times, Jon Cotner’s ambulatory, real-life interaction/art installation, inciting strangers to interact positively with one another. The project was created in hopes of reigniting a certain kind of social spontaneity that is lost on all of us by way of headphones and fast-paced lifestyles. It’s been garnering […]
...moreSummer Reading Fun
Want to be on the same literary wavelength as a Pulitzer prize winning author this summer? Consciously planning your summer reading synchronicity with Jeffrey Eugenides is fun. So is hiking in the Alps, but there are more barriers to accomplishing that goal, so here is some summer reading fun to plan.
...moreFrench Faux Pas
A twenty year-old French law that sought to keep the news media from promoting commercial enterprises is being newly reinforced. This means that using “Facebook” and “Twitter” on air is strictly forbidden. This seems like a good way to stave off potential conflicts of interest, however with ubiquity having rendered these terms into (basically) general […]
...moreA History Of Emoticons
“In 1887, Ambrose Bierce wrote an essay, ‘For Brevity and Clarity,’ suggesting ways to alter punctuation to better represent tone. He proposed a single bracket flipped horizontally for wry smiles, ‘to be appended, with the full stop, to every jocular or ironical sentence.’” At Good, the unlikely origins of the pervasive emoticon. Can it can […]
...moreMy salmon day started when I quash squashed through his fornicorium
The Book Bench pointed me in the direction of this phenomenal time waster of a site called Unwords, which is “a dictionary devoted to made-up words.” Thanks a lot, Book Bench. I decided immediately upon finding the word “toilet toupee” (any shag carpet toilet cover that causes the lid to become top-heavy, thus creating endless […]
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
At Maud, how much should philosophy and fiction have anything to do with each other? If you liked Julie Klausner’s interview here at The Rumpus and want more, she has another interview over at The New Yorker Book Bench. (Spoiler alert: in the latter, Kermit the Frog is definitely discussed). Curious about black metal and […]
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