Emily Gould champions Barbara Comyns‘s overlooked novels at The Awl. One more deserving mention: Comyns’s haunting Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead.
“The reader emerges … refreshed but crippled”
Kids These Days
“The complexity of texts students are being assigned to read has declined by about three grade levels over the past 100 years,” says Eric Stickney, the educational research director for Renaissance Learning.
Man Uses Twitter to Tweet About…His Roommate
Shhdontellsteve is a Twitter account devoted to “Steve,” the roommate of the unnamed narrator. Kind of like The Truman Show for Twitter. (As I write this, it occurs to me that this may constitute “telling Steve.” Apologies if that’s the case.)
●
●
2 comments:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Taking Bets on the Nobel Prize
Popular bookmakers Ladbrokes have announced their opening odds for the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Smart money seems to favor Haruki Murakami, who would surely take the prize if it depended on recent book sales. Meanwhile the next two favorites are Joyce Carol Oates (6/1) and Hungarian author Péter Nádas (7/1). All signs point to this being another year of disappointment for Philip Roth’s fans – his odds of winning stand at 16/1.
The School of Life
“There is something ersatz, if not quite fraudulent, about [Alain] de Botton’s entire intellectual enterprise.” At The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lisa Levy throws down the gauntlet.
●
●
HomeWORK More Like HomeFUN
“Heidi Maier, the new superintendent of the 42,000-student Marion County public school district in Florida, said in an interview that she made the decision based on solid research about what works best in improving academic achievement in students.” In place of traditional homework, 20,000 elementary school students will spend 20 minutes reading a book of their choice each night, reports The Washington Post. Pair with T.K. Dalton on books, kids, and gender.
●
●
“Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead” is a favorite of mine. I am very happy to see that people will get a chance to read it. It is a really strange and wonderful book.
It is, indeed, a strange book. I recently finished reading it, but I’m not sure what I think of it. It was worth the time, but I don’t think it will stay with me, and I don’t feel any compulsion to read anything else by her. Perhaps with time.