“I won’t be a dried-up Oxford don, anyhow. I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.” –Oscar Wilde on rejecting a career as a classics scholar. (via Book Bench)
The Ambitions of Oscar Wilde
Elaborate Gilded Contraptions
I wonder if this historical look at the crafting of espresso machines in The Smithsonian will make you think, as I did, about how incredibly Steam Punk a good cappuccino can be.
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The Stand on Screen
Getting a director for Stephen King’s The Stand was almost as difficult as surviving the virus. The latest director to try is Josh Boone, who is no stranger to adaptations because he’s bringing The Fault in Our Stars to screen. To brush up on your King, read our essay on learning about America through his novels.
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Where to Begin
“I saw a novel with a mysterious-looking black woman on the cover. That was why I picked it up – because of the African woman on the cover of a book in the Science Fiction and Fantasy section. I read the first page and my eyes nearly popped out.” Book Riot has a killer roundup of posts in honor of Octavia Butler‘s birthday today, including five other sci-fi authors on being inspired by her writing (that’s Nnedi Okorafor above). Pair with our own Edan Lepucki‘s consideration of Butler’s novel Kindred.
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“Her prints certainly have muscle, and a lot of it.”
Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons, a collection of one-panel comic prints made by Flannery O’Connor during her time in college, is due out later this week. Meanwhile, Barry Moser exhibits a few of the highlights.
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Unruly Bodies on Medium
YiR alum Roxane Gay and Medium have collaborated on a magazine that will feature pieces throughout the month from 24 different writers. The writers all address the question “what does it mean to live in an unruly body?” and they range from Kiese Laymon to Keah Brown to Randa Jarrar.
Fears of a Nation
Recommended Reading: this loving tribute to James Baldwin in the NYRB.
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Across Space and Time
“These sorts of connections are at the centre of nearly all time machine fiction. These novels usually draw attention to telling commonalities across historical eras, or between the past and the present. That gives an engaging puzzle quality to the books—we read seeking out the dropped clues that will shed light on the purpose of the parallel.” On fiction in which the plot takes place over multiple timelines.
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