Online used book marketplace AbeBooks rounded up the most expensive books sold via its site in October. At the top is a collection of Scottish music from 1782 that went for $8,500. Also on the list are some collectible Tolkien and Hemingway. (Thanks, Laurie)
AbeBooks’ Most Expensive
A Short History of the Executioner
In her short history of executioners, Stassa Edwards notes that the decision to replace “the traditional punishment” of drowning people “in a sack in a local river” was actually quite pragmatic: it was “more economical” to go with a simple beheading.
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Let’s Write About Sex Baby
“Her pincers tore at me… I stormed her openings as if she was a beleaguered fortress.” We’re wincing-slash-laughing at Lapham’s Quarterly‘s infographic of authors’ attempts to put sex down on the page throughout history. Pair with author Julia Fierro‘s great piece about trying to *do it* in her first novel.
It’s not such a Mad Mad world afterall.
Sure, the various TV recaps, screencaps, and Paris Review fan fiction will be a help, but let’s be honest, how long will those last? You could get through all of it today, in a binge. What you need, my friend, is a good book to sate that Mad Men craving you’ll be having now that it’s off the air again. Well, here’s a list of 10 great ones. That should do it. Oh, yes.
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Scrubbing Facebook
Adrian Chen spoke with a former Facebook employee, and learned “how Facebook censors the dark content it doesn’t want you to see, and the people whose job it is to make sure you don’t.” In short: exploitation of “human content monitors” in the third world.
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If You Can Dream
In today’s installment of “The Unpopular Opinion,” Malcolm Jones for The Daily Beast thinks that it’s high time that we let Rudyard Kipling out of the penalty box. Jones argues that, while Kipling may have written a lot of “jingoistic trash,” to judge him “by the standards of our time, not his, serves him poorly and obscures his true genius.”
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On The Road On The Screen
Francis Ford Coppola’s movie adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road may finally see the light of day. The film, directed by Walter Salles and starring the likes of Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, and Steve Buscemi, could hit French theaters as early as March 23rd.
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