reading
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New Radical Youth Library Arrives In The Bronx
“The more you read, the iller you’ll be as an emcee…” –Rodstarz In the Bronx, the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective has turned a former candy factory into the Richie Perez Radical Library for Youth. The objective of the library is…
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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 heart searched out the sense,” [Augustine wrote,] “but his voice…
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The Rumpus Interview with Halimah Marcus and Benjamin Samuel
Halimah Marcus and Benjamin Samuel, the co-editors of Recommended Reading, discuss the ins and outs of editing an ambitious literary project.
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Sun, Sand and Substance
Looking for beach reads? The Atlantic asked a number of trusted writers and readers, including Sash Frere-Jones, Emily Gould, and Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott, to recommend books “that live up to the spirit of summer while still making us think.”
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Charged Sentences
“It is by fussing with sentences that a character becomes clear to me, that a plot unfolds. To work on them so compulsively, perhaps prematurely, is to see the trees before the forest. And yet I am incapable of conceiving…
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Spoiled Stories
Do you want someone to come along and spoil that short-story you’re about to begin? Yes you do, says this study. The “Hedonic Ratings of Spoiled & Unspoiled Stories” chart, compiled by U.C. San Diego researchers, addresses three distinct genres—ironic…
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Don’t Break the Chain!
Hundreds will gather later this month at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to set a new world record for the longest reading chain. You may be asking yourself, what is a reading chain? Well, let me fill you in. A…
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Notable San Francisco, This Week: 1/24-1/30
This week in San Francisco: Clown Burlesque, stories about food, art shows, magazine readings, and Cyclops Wearing Flip Flops. Monday 1/24: This month at Cat’s Pajamas, get your regular dose of burlesque with a side of clown as Dottie Lux…
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The Blurb #20: Joy Is a Job
I, too, want to feel a buzz, but I have no illusions. It takes effort. Reading good books requires discipline.
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Why Reading Kept Me Out Of Jail
I wasn’t a bad kid growing up, I just liked to steal things — vodka, cigars, communion wine — and set things on fire. Once or twice I used profanity in the presence of a nun. But I only had…
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Let Us Now Raze Famous Men
A Rumpus Meditation on Editors, Ambition, and Angry Dependence (in 33 loosely jointed parts): 1. On July 30, the managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, Kevin Morrissey, took his life. His note stated that he “just couldn’t bear it…
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On The City And The City
“‘No two persons ever read the same book,’ the writer and critic Edmund Wilson said. Let me expand that sentiment outward into the geography of experience: it seems increasingly clear to me that no two persons live in the same…