Chinese citizens are increasingly adopting English nicknames. But, why would anyone choose a name like “Rainman” or “Mud”? The new book In China, My Name is… explores this puzzling phenomena. (Awesome t-shirt, Ben)
In China, my name is Mud.
Arab Authors on Twitter
If you woke up this morning and thought, “You know, I could use more Arab authors on my Twitter feed,” then boy do I have the link for you.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tax Records
A detailed analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s tax records, obtained from his estate, at The American Scholar. William J. Quirk scrutinizes Scott’s financial ledgers from 1919 to 1940, including short story royalties, expenses relating to wife Zelda, and his years spent in Hollywood. Indeed, you are what you spend.
●
●
Amazon’s Programming
Look out, network television. Amazon’s hiring creative executives to shepherd “crowd-sourced scripts” through development.
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day: Newitz; O’Rourke; Kent; Peery; McDermott
Out this week: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz; Sun in Days by Meghan O’Rourke; The Good People by Hannah Kent; The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs by Janet Peery; and The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
●
●
Asterix Co-Creator Retires
Albert Uderzo, co-creator of Asterix, announced his retirement yesterday. Since 1977, Uderzo has been the sole author of the popular French comic books, which have sold over 350 million copies worldwide. His successor has yet to be named, though Uderzo said it will be an artist “who has been following us for a long time inside a studio I set up.”
●
●
“These gentlemen simply had too many dreams in common.”
Recommended Reading: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned author Wells Tower journeyed to Tupelo, Mississippi in order to investigate the man who mailed ricin to Barack Obama.
●
●
Vicious Circle
Michele Filgate was so terrified by Dave Eggers’s The Circle that she quit social media for a week and wrote about the experience for Salon. “I don’t want to become like Mae, sacrificing real-life friendships for the allure of the screen. I want to be aware of the world around me. I want to write about that world. I want to feel more alive, even if that means being lonelier in the process.” Pair with: our review of the novel.
Wild Inspiration
Here’s a potential remedy for your writer’s block or attention deficit issues: take a hike in the woods. (Maybe even take a hike while reading a book.)
●
●