Anna Quindlen at The Huffington Post is one of the many writers reflecting on the greatness of To Kill A Mockingbird in honor of the book’s 50th anniversary.
Anna Quindlen on Harper Lee
Mapping Short Story Titles
The B.O.M.M. blog looked at our recent item Best American Short Stories: By the Numbers, in which we crunched some numbers behind the Best American Short Stories series, and created a nifty word map of the short story titles that appeared in the series from 1978 to 2008. “The most frequent word for a title (not including articles and such)? Life. It has appeared 9 times.” If anyone else decides to mine some interesting discoveries from the B.A.S.S. data, let us know.
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I’ll Take “Enjambments” for a Thousand, Alex
A writer at this blog watched a night of literary Jeopardy. (Here’s a hint: what is The Outlet?)
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“A Grand Experiment”
Year in Reading alum Daniel José Older responds to the writers speaking out against Trump.
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Lacework
“The plot, obviously, is kind of difficult to explain, like an earnest, pared-down, hipster Foucault’s Pendulum. Not only are all of the plot turns above laid out through a multiframed narrative, replete with several people’s footnotes, but the events are interwoven with disquisitions on the history of map-making, Situationist philosophy, urban planning, and pop music.” At Slate, our own Lydia Kiesling reads Catie Disabato’s The Ghost Network. (ICYMI, Dan Lopez reviewed the book for The Millions.)
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What’s Your Favorite?
Earlier this week, I told you about a few lists of some really great poetry from 2015. In keeping with the poetic spirit, here’s another fantastic piece from The New York Times in which everyone from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Elena Ferrante talk about their favorite poems of all time.
Gilead
Recommended Reading: Willa Paskin’s review of Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale.
Controversial Books
This week in book-related infographics: a look at the most controversial books of all time.
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