Last Thursday’s Goodreads event hosted by Patrick and featuring Emily Mandel and attended by myself and several other Millions writers and alums got written up in the Wall Street Journal. I’m told that there is a photo of yours truly in the print version, but a hard copy of the WSJ is hard to come by here in the woods. Also, Clancy Martin likes The Millions and some other great sites!
In the News
Scientology Revealed
Janet Reitman, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, spent five years researching Inside Scientology, which is reviewed here by Brook Wilensky-Lanford for The San Francisco Chronicle. Earlier this year, ‘Million Dollar Baby‘-screenwriter Paul Haggis spoke with Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker about L. Ron Hubbard‘s religion.
Tis the Season: Micro-Volunteering
Imagine how many volunteer hours you could log if volunteering was as easy as playing a game of FarmVille or watching a video on YouTube. Now it is, thanks to Ben Rigby and the other folks at Sparked (formerly The Extraordinaries). Sparked directs you to challenges suited to your skills and interests submitted by nonprofits around the country and the world who need help with brainstorming, copy editing, IT, translations, marketing, fund-raising, and more. Now you can volunteer without leaving your desk.
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Triumph of the Vanity Press?
Is Sergio de la Pava‘s A Naked Singularity the first great self-published novel of the new century? Aren’t you at least a little bit curious?
The Price of Black Ambition
“I have come to realize how much I have, throughout my life, bought into the narrative of this alluring myth of personal responsibility and excellence. I realize how much I believe that all good things will come if I—if we—just work hard enough.” Year in Reading alum Roxane Gay writes for VQR Online about “The Price of Black Ambition.” Pair with our review of An Untamed State.
The Literary Rx
A book a day keeps the doctor away. The Reach Out and Read Program hopes to give children (from 6 months to 5) as much exposure to books as vitamins when they got to the doctor’s office. Pediatricians who participate in the initiative discuss reading at every check-up by giving books to families, advising parents about the importance of reading to their kids, and monitoring how the children engage with books.
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Sick Burns
Daily Show writer Daniel Radosh was asked by his son’s school to sign a permission slip in order to read Ray Bradbury‘s Fahrenheit 451. Hilarity ensued. Also: remember that time a bunch of parents tried to censor The Lorax?
“To do so, I felt, would be too dangerous”
Over at Electric Literature, Tara Isabella Burton likens the experience of reading her ex’s favorite book – in this case Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity – to “rifling through someone’s letters after a death.”
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