Apropos of our recent essay by a student hiding out in a bookstore with spotty Wi-Fi to avoid reading online, The Rumpus interviewed a bookstore and coffeeshop owner who has taken the bold step of making his establishment a WiFi-free zone. “I’ve observed and been told many times about how the availability of Wi-Fi creates a space where people are wrapped up in their own, solitary world and not interacting with each other.”
Bookstore Unplugged
Domino Effect
2,131 books and 27 volunteers helped The Seattle Public Library set the record for longest book domino chain earlier this month.
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In Defense of Quiet Books
“The best thing I ever do for my writing is to take a walk alone in the woods behind our house. Nothing else gets my writing juices flowing so well. And yes, I think that I absolutely need more quiet in our current fractured world.” For Poets & Writers, novelist Leesa Cross-Smith interviewed fellow writer Silas House about quiet books and the importance of nature in the writing process. Pair with: our own Emily St. John Mandel on the pleasures of quiet books.
“Let me eat it all and let me eat it now!”
“McDonald’s, I am here and I am hungry, feed me, let me eat it all and let me eat it now! Oh, what a hymn, what a hallelujah you sing to me, two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun.” Michael Murray imagines “Jack Kerouac‘s Lost Restaurant Reviews” for Hazlitt and they are absolute joys.
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“Soccer is inextricably tied to nationalism”
Among Jorge Luis Borges’s observations about soccer were the following: “Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular;” soccer is “aesthetically ugly;” and “soccer is one of England’s biggest crimes.” That is to say: his distaste is well documented. But why did he feel this way? Millions contributor Shaj Mathew takes a look.
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The Best of Last (Crusade)
I’m shocked that this is even open to debate. Emily Asher-Perrin on why Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the best of all Indy films.
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You Faking Fakers
This quick-and-dirty Times article about a crackdown on fake reviews includes one of the best sentences to appear in the Gray Lady of late: “Faking reviews often begins with faked reviews of the company faking the reviews.”
Summer Poems from Charles Simic
Recommended Listening: Charles Simic reads five new poems for The Southern Review’s summer podcast.
My favourite local coffee shop has done this, and it’s one of the busiest, most vibrant businesses in the neighbourhood.
Despite it being so busy, you can also actually get a table, because you find more people are actually there for coffee and scones, rather than to annex a table meant for four as their office away from the office.