NPR
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Song of the Day: “Misunderstood”
The incredible cacophony of the bridge on Wilco’s definitive ballad “Misunderstood” is all the more striking because of its contrast with the rest of the tender, harmonious song. The brilliance of songwriter Jeff Tweedy is on full display here as…
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The Truth about Memory
Once I decided I wasn’t going to stop if I flinched, I figured I was opening myself up to some hard stuff. So, when it came, I kind of expected it. Maybe some of the beautiful moments of my life surprised…
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A Love Born of Mystery
“I was looking at books… Gary and I had seen each other. We didn’t know one another. And he walked over to me in this particular bookstore and handed me a book by Teran and said, ‘You’ve gotta read this…
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An Urban Sort of Loneliness
The Lonely City bristles with heart-piercing wisdom. Loneliness, according to Laing, feels “like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.” Later, she admits that at one point during her own hermetic existence in New York, “I felt…
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Crime Girls
NPR explores whether and how putting “girl” in the title of your crime novel will garner favorable comparisons to heavy-hitters like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train—and therefore benefit from an increase in sales: So…
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Food Fit for a Pope
He loves Argentinian empanadas and dulce de leche. In 2015, he said that if he had only one wish, it would be to travel unrecognized to a pizzeria and have a slice—or two or three. In other words, he may…
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Between Two Worlds
“‘We have to leave the country,’ I informed my wife as I went over the final proofs. ‘We won’t be able to stay here after this book is published.’” NPR looks at the satirical novel/memoir Native by Sayed Kashua and explores…
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Dickens and the Lottery
If you’re disappointed you didn’t win the Powerball jackpot, head over to NPR to read Charles Dickens’s account of the lottery in Naples, an event he seemed to find both amusing and horrifying: Dickens heard of a man being thrown fatally…
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180,000 High-Res Pictures Are Worth A Lot of Words
The New York Public Library has made 180,000 high-res images available for download, and they’re challenging the public to come up with creative new uses for old pictures.
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Shakespeare’s First Folio, Coming to a City Near You!
The Folger has 82 First Folios—the largest collection in the world. It’s located several stairways down, in a rare manuscript vault. To reach them, you first have to get through a fire door … (if a fire did threaten these…
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The Rumpus Interview with Dean Koontz
Dean Koontz talks about his newest novel, Ashley Bell, overcoming self-doubt, and “what this incredibly beautiful language of ours allows you to do.”
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In Her Own Words
Over at NPR, authors Claire Vaye Watkins and Marlon James talk about Watkins’s recent essay, “On Pandering,” which she describes as: …internalizing the sexism that I’d encountered in the writing world, and the world beyond, and adjusting what I wrote…