William Blake may have described its “green and pleasant land” but this week England had traded green for white, as you can see in this NASA photograph (c/o Gizmodo).
England’s Green and Pleasant Land
Homesteading Alone
So you’ve bought the books on Urban Homesteading, but what you really want is to escape completely and build your own comfy cabin in the woods. Here are three books by Homesteaders who "go it alone."
Nabokov’s Unpublished Letters
Nearly 300 previously unpublished love letters written by Vladimir Nabokov to his wife Vera Slonim from 1923 to 1975 will be published next year by Knopf.
Amazon Shows Off ‘Kindle for the Web’
Amazon is battling the multi-platform capabilities of Google's new ebookstore with its new "Kindle for the Web." The demo makes it look pretty easy on the eyes. Kindle books were already accessible on a number of mobile platforms. What's new here is taking the Kindle capabilities to the PC.
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We’re Gonna Make It
Recommended Reading: A chapter of Janice Shapiro's new graphic memoir Crushable, on the subject of the late Mary Tyler Moore.
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ROTUS
Curious what the Obamas will be reading over Christmas? The Scrutinizer in Chief stopped by Upshur Books in Washington, D.C. on Small Business Saturday to selected a nice little haul for the winter break with titles ranging from Jonathan Franzen’s Purity to Rachel Renée Russell’s Dork Diaries 1: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life.
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The Legacy of Disaster
“Historians, I believe, are dedicated to fighting against the tide of our social amnesia. The reason they continue to write books about the Holocaust, or Appomatox, or the earthquake in Haiti, is to try to help us remember the suffering and the extent of the damage. Some try to humanize, and others turn to abstraction.” Stewart L. Sinclair writes on burying the remnants of disaster, over at Guernica. Pair with his Millions essay on technology and Apple’s operating systems.
Writing Sarcastically
Sarcasm makes the Internet go round. No, seriously, it basically does, and over at The Toast a linguist examines some of the strategies writers have developed, or are trying to develop, to communicate that sarcasm through writing, without the benefit of an eye-roll and a different tone of voice.
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