The shortlist for the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of 2010 has been announced. Among the hopefuls: Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way.
Titular Oddities
Picador Playlists
The gulf between Picador and every other publishing house continues to yawn in one major aspect: literary playlists. To honor the release of Dylan Jones’s Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music, Justin Hargett put together a list of his “Favorite Covered Songs!” (Previously: the “Marriage Playlist” for Jeffrey Eugenides)
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Hunger Games Madlibs
Happy Hunger Games! To celebrate the release of Catching Fire, read Ben Blatt’s textual analysis of the most popular adverbs, adjectives, and sentences used by Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games trilogy, Stephenie Meyer in Twilight, and J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series. Unsurprisingly, the most popular sentence in Twilight is, “I sighed.” We’re sighing, too. Pair with: Our essay on how teen fantasy heroines need to grow up.
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The Epicenter of Pacific Literature
Mike Sonksen takes a look at both Tinfish and Bamboo Ridge Press, as well as a handful of influential Hawaiian writers, as he investigates “Maui, Pacific Literature, and the Aloha Spirit.”
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Bernardine Evaristo Thanks the Stage
Bernardine Evaristo pays tribute to a youth spent in the theater and credits acting with starting her career in the arts.
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Like a Child
‘The 4½-foot tall poststructuralist philosopher I live with demonstrates a radical mode of viewership daily. Because of her, and with her, I am able—by moments—to move out of my own natural larval state and experience movies not just as deliverers of entertainment, conveyors of meaning, or objects of aesthetic contemplation, but as pure fields of emotional and sensory intensity, almost like rooms to which one can return.” Dana Stevens on watching movies with, and like, a child.
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Finished or Completed?
Recommended Reading: This long look at “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible,” an exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art which explores the difference between completing and finishing an artwork.
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