New this holiday week is former indie rocker Matthew Gallaway’s The Metropolis Case, an opera infused debut, written up favorably and excerpted at The Times.
Tuesday New Release Day
Thinking and Feeling
How to read a Victorian novel. How to read in public. How to start a Tumblr for Women.
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College Football Season Is Upon Us, So Read Up
With college football season officially upon us, I’d like to take some time to recommend some books and articles on the subject of my favorite game. For starters, check out Nick Ripatrazone’s Millions piece about Don DeLillo, sports scandals, and growing up with the game. Next, Taylor Branch’s quintessential ebook on the NCAA’s cartel-like stranglehold on the sport deserves a read from anybody who’s ever participated in or watched college athletics of any kind. (You can get a good idea of the book from his Atlantic piece, too.) And lastly, I recommend checking out John U. Bacon’s latest book, Fourth and Long, which examines how “money, influence and power haunt the league.” (You may recall Bacon’s name from when I reviewed his earlier book on college football last year.)
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Book Learnin’
“This is the first time that the college has embarked on such a robust process for measuring Core Educational Competency In Reading Things In Books And Writing About Them, and we really can’t do it without your mandated participation. We have devised this rubric in consultation with the Office of Institutional Research About the Institution, which tirelessly gathers data and then enters it into spreadsheets. Please see their Statement of Very Worthy Goals in attachment 6.”
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Epic Listening
Speaking of podcasts: our own Epic Fail hits the Culture File podcast. Listen up!
The Best Lincoln
The Morning Edition crew sifts through nearly 15,000 biographies of Abraham Lincoln in order to determine the best of the best. Janet Potter, you have your work cut out for you.
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