Follow Mad Men set decorator Amy Wells on a search for period furniture in Pasadena.
Mad Men Style
More Kindle ‘Offers’
Amazon has introduced another ad-infused Kindle ‘with Special Offers.’ You can now get the 3G model, regularly $189, for $164, if you opt for a version that displays Amazon promotions on the home screen and screensaver.
Tuesday New Release Day
New this week stateside is buzzed-about Booker shortlister Room by Emma Donoghue. Also out: Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, a new collection by “20 Under 40” lister Yiyun Li; Sigrid Nunez’s post-apocalyptic Salvation City; and a McSweeney’s-published memoir Half a Life by Chang and Eng author Darin Strauss.
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Keanu Reeves, Poet
for actors who’ve considered suicide/when the matrix isn’t enuf: Keanu Reeves, who some years ago raised hackles when he played Shakespeare’s melancholy Dane, has now written a book-length poem called Ode to Happiness that pokes fun at excessive melancholy. “I draw a hot sorrow bath/In my despair room,” it begins.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
A “typo” in the Declaration of Independence has been contributing to “a routine but serious misunderstanding” of the document, says researcher Danielle Allen.
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Nothing if Not Consistent
Fans of Moby-Dick should read Nathaniel Philbrick’s outstanding historical account In the Heart of the Sea. The book, which tracks the fate of The Essex, a New England whaling vessel sunk by a humongous sperm whale in the South Pacific, is vivid and harrowing. It’s also, as it turns out, only one of the naval catastrophes to befall George Pollard, Jr., The Essex‘s captain: a second wreck of his was recently located off the coast of Hawaii.
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