- io9 offers up “The Twenty Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life,” from Frankenstein to Pattern Recognition. (via)
- Cathleen Schine on the charms of Peter Carey
- The “Thomas Bernhard cult” claims a new initiate.
- F.O.T.M. (Friend of The Millions) Lydia Millet talks about “endangered species, the idea of motherhood, and her stint at Hustler.”
- “Why do scribblers make drinking their second art? For one thing, it primes them for their task.” Writers and booze.
- Some American Studies undergrads at The University of Virginia have put together an online exhibit titled “The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930s.”
- NPR’s “In Character” segment considers Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne.
I'll definitely have to check out the life-changing SF list. There's an awful lot of great SF that I've never gotten around to reading; maybe it'll give me a concrete place to start!
The online exhibit titled "The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930's" is certainly a poor reflection on the education received by the students at the Univ. of Virginia. I gave up counting the typographical errors, and the writing was very poor for college-level students. Not to mention the astounding lack of research that obviously went into this project – the overly simplistic explanations of the Great Depression and the revisionist history was very disappointing to read. I would ask for my child's tuition back if she attended the Univ. of Virginia.