On Why College Professors Don’t Envy the Young, at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Why College Professors Don’t Envy the Young
My Ears! My Ears!
In a move that could scar you for life, Gilbert Gottfried reads selected passages (Very NSFW!) from E L James’ breakout book Fifty Shades of Grey.
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The Current Extinction
The Guardian has begun rolling out their series of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time. The first? Elizabeth Kolbert's horrifying, no-holds-barred ecological treatise The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. Our friends over at the Football Book Club took a look at The Sixth Extinction earlier this year, as well.
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The Contrived
It’s a common saying among actors that the script does most of the work. Which raises an interesting question: is it possible for a great writer to make art out of a bad story? At The Kenyon Review’s blog, Amit Majmudar says it is, using Shakespeare as proof. Related: five experts on the Bard’s greatest plays.
Till Death or Cliches Do Us Part
At the Poetry Foundation’s website, Ruth Graham tackles a strangely ubiquitous question: how does a couple go about choosing a wedding poem? (For context, it helps to keep the following quote in mind: “the aesthetics of [a personal] wedding, at least for couples of a certain age and posture, are practically set in stone: indie pop music, mason jars, white Christmas lights, wildflowers.”)
App Happy
Several recent novels -- among them Dave Eggers’s The Circle and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge --tackle the effects of social media on our world. The latest, Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen, may be the best of the bunch, writes Andrew Hulktrans. At Bookforum, he explains why Cohen's depiction of an app-saturated world is unparalleled. You could also read Jonathan Frederick Post on Cohen’s novel Witz.
Neal Stephenson’s New Digital Novel
The New York Times reports on the launch of Neal Stephenson’s new serialized digital novel, The Mongoliad, complete with video, music, and user-profiles. (via AuthorScoop)
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