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.
“Life around the pool”
Recommended Reading: Colm Tóibín on a new biography of the artist David Hockney.
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Shock and Auden
A lost journal of W. H. Auden, one of three that the poet is known to have kept, has recently been discovered.
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If Charlotte Lucas were a cat
“If a modern film version of Pride and Prejudice were produced today, some of the main characters should be gay, Elizabeth and Darcy should not get married at the end, and Charlotte Lucas should be played by a tabby cat.” Laura Fairchild reveals her students’ ideas for new adaptations of Jane Austen novels while meditating on what Austen can or can’t teach us about modern relationships.
Eat Your Heart Out, James Patterson
Meet Philip M. Parker, a marketing professor at INSEAD Business School and the man whose name graces the covers of over 100,000 books. Is he the most prolific author of the modern age? Well, kind of. Thanks to “a computer system that can write books about specific subjects in about 20 minutes,” Parker and his company have combined to create over 800,000 titles currently listed on Amazon – including such works as The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Spinal Stenosis and Webster’s Icelandic – English Thesaurus Dictionary.
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After the Storm
Ten years after hurricane Katrina, Fatima Shaik reflects on freedom of expression, gentrification, and the state of education in New Orleans. You could also check out Gary Rivlin’s Katrina: After the Flood, featured in our 2015 nonfiction preview.
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Chicken Soup for the Stall
As literary genres go, bathroom graffiti ranks somewhere between obscenities carved into desks and poorly spelled comments in terms of respectability. Yet it’s still a form that could reveal interesting things, which is why a group of researchers took a series of fact-finding trips to public stalls across America. Their takeaway? “The mere fact of being in a public bathroom could be skewing how people choose to present themselves when they uncap that Sharpie.” Related: Buzz Poole on The History of American Graffiti.