Rediscovering the Forgotten
The drive to digitize ancient manuscripts is growing quickly, and in the process, scholars are discovering works they never realized they had. The current technology is good enough that scholars can...
View ArticleSaturday Morning Links
Just in time for your next dinner party: mermaids are considered halal. In case you were wondering.Here’s a really cool museum idea: 80 years of patent models.The Wall Street Journal reminds us why R....
View ArticleRaymond Carver: Vicarious Slumming for the WSJ
It’s Raymond Carver night at the Rumpus! Moments after I wrote and scheduled the preceding post, I saw this tweet from the Library of America:“WSJ on Raymond Carver: ‘There must be few story...
View ArticleBreaking: Writers Are Eccentric And Enjoy Bathtubs, Charts
The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed a bunch of writers to see how they do it. Of course, they called it “How to Write a Great Novel,” but I’m not sure if trying to copy exactly what these...
View ArticleA Necessarily Incomplete But Hopefully Helpful List That Proves The Slush...
A couple of weeks ago, I ranted against a Wall Street Journal article that proclaimed “The Slush Pile is Dead.” The slush pile, for those who are unfamiliar, is the name for the large amount of...
View ArticleLucky Peach Y’all
McSweeney’s and David Chang’s new hunger-inducing venture, Lucky Peach, is out now. Check out the McSweeney’s attention in the Wall Street Journal. The first issue is ramen-themed. Being that there’s...
View ArticleLetter 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...
View ArticleBestsellers, Worst Ethics
Reading bestsellers lists can be baffling. You know the whole world isn’t going to spring for literary fiction or erudite essay collections all the time, but sometimes a book seems so bland and...
View ArticleWell, This Is Certainly One Way to Give Advice
On a blog for the Wall Street Journal (where else?), Emily Oster gives advice based on economic theory. For example:There is a model in economics called the “sS” model. It’s not often applied to...
View ArticleWe Can Rebuild Ourselves by Reading
Libraries without Borders unveiled its latest project at the New York Public Library. They’re shipping a “library in a box,” or Idea Boxes, to refugee camps.The idea is that food, water and shelter...
View ArticleBaijiu on the Rocks
Baijiu is a distilled firewater somewhat like vodka crossed with a non-apple Calvados, with a distinctive nose.Have you tried baijiu, the world’s most consumed liquor? Chances are high that you have...
View ArticleTehran Taxi Library
A taxi driving husband-and-wife team converted their cab into a library with more than 40 titles, reports The Wall Street Journal. Mehdi Yazdany and Sarvenaz Heraner sell about 30 books a day, but also...
View ArticleRead Slowly, Read Better
Reading is healthy, but not all reading is created equally. Advocates of slow reading suggest that dedicated periods of thirty to forty-five minutes away from other distractions can lower stress and...
View ArticleThe 24 Amtrak Residents
Earlier this year, Alexander Chee tweeted about his enjoyment of writing on trains. Amtrak jumped aboard and decided to launch an Amtrak residency program granting writers free, multi-day train rides...
View ArticleRobots Take Over the Library
In the first step of what will undoubtedly be the robot uprising, two robots will be joining the staff of the Westport, Connecticut library. The robots will primarily assist in teaching coding, but...
View ArticleWord of the Day: Esemplasy
(n.); unification; to make into one; the unifying power of imagination; accredited to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)“Austen is far from superficial … Her books are intimate and compelling. She has...
View ArticleA Wrinkle in the Wrinkle
The Wall Street Journal has an article that questions the traditional interpretations of A Wrinkle in Time:Ms. Voiklis said she wanted readers to know the book wasn’t a simple allegory of communism....
View ArticleFeminism in the Family
The Wall Street Journal interviews biographer Charlotte Gordon about Mary Shelley’s relationship with her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and how her mother’s feminism permeated the future Frankenstein...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Interview with Erik Larson
Erik Larson’s new book, Dead Wake, reconstructs the moments leading up to one of the Great War’s most shocking massacres: the sinking of the civilian-packed Lusitania by Germany’s Unterseeboot-20. It’s...
View ArticleSound Takes: Blood Moon
Ancient OceanBlood Moon (Beyond Beyond Is Beyond)Ambient music is a fart in an elevator for some people. Whether it’s distaste for background noise or a trained expectation of action when you press...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....