In one corner, Sarah Palin, the “bone-licker, shit-kicker, caribou-killer.” In the other, the gentle friend of animals, Jonathan Safran Foer. According to Macy Halford at the NYer blog, this fight’d be no contest.
Smackdown: Palin V. Foer
Popular Library Borrowed E-Books
OverDrive released its lists of the most-downloaded e-books from libraries in December 2011. These lists look pretty different from the current New York Times e-book bestseller lists. Here's why.
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On Formative Viewings
At The Guardian’s website, Joe Queenan examines a little-known film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, that “beguiled” Martin Scorcese when he was just twelve years old.
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The Count
"And who could disagree? Joyce Carol Oates expressed her view on Twitter: 'Wikipedia bias an accurate reflection of universal bias. All (male) writers are writers; a (woman) writer is a woman writer.'" Wikipedia has got a women writers problem.
Revisiting the Archive
Recommended Listening: Esquire has a new podcast on classic stories from their archive. The latest installment features Nick Flynn on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up, which first appeared in the magazine in 1936.
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Joke Science
What exactly happens to our brains when we laugh? Richard Restak (of The American Scholar) investigates.
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Draw Hard
Harold and the Purple Crayon is a classic children’s book. Is it also a writing guide? In an essay for Bookslut, Mairead Case explains why she re-reads it whenever she’s finishing a project: the main character’s need to create a room for himself is a corollary to the writing process.
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