The New Yorker Book Bench has posted its 2010 Holiday Gift Guide.
Gifts for the Bookish
The Second Pass Interviewed
On the occasion of its first anniversary, The Second Pass founder John Williams gets interviewed by VQR. “I realize I’m not making a convincing case for the Luddite thing. You’ll just have to trust me.”
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Longshot Magazine
Longshot is an online magazine with quite an interesting concept: “Over a 48 hour period from noon July 29, 2011, through noon July 31, 2011, thousands of writers, editors, artists, photographers, programmers, videographers, and other creatives from all around the world will come together via the Internet to make a magazine from start to finish.” This issue’s theme is “Debt” and you can follow its progress via Tumblr.
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A Writer’s Writer
Amber Sparks investigates why short stories are overlooked. She writes, “Most people really don’t like short stories. And that includes lots of critics, who often seem to regard short story collections as a warm-up for the real thing.” Pair with Paul Vidich’s Millions piece about the future of the short story.
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Fighting Words
At WBUR’s Modern Love podcast, actress Alysia Reiner (Orange Is The New Black, How To Get Away With Murder) reads author Laura Munson’s essay “Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear” from her memoir This Is Not The Story You Think It Is.
Blocked
“Trump has blocked me from reading his tweets. I may have to kill myself.” Stephen King responds to news that the U.S. President doesn’t want the author reading his Twitter account. Luckily, reports Entertainment Weekly, J.K. Rowling has stepped in, offering to DM King anything he misses (these are all sentences we regret having to write, fyi). See also: Elizabeth Minkel‘s consideration of Rowling’s second narrative thoughts.
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Harvard and MIT Go MOOC
Harvard and MIT are partnering for an MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) known as edX. Currently, similar offerings are available from Stanford, Princeton, UPenn, and the University of Michigan. Unfortunately edX and others like it will grade student papers by utilizing “crowd-sourcing” and “natural-language software.” Oh, geeze. Not that again.
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