Amid further discussion and exploration of marginalia, a discovery of cartoon marginalia in the New Yorker archives.
Cartoon Marginalia
Not the Worst Thing
Step one: go read A. Igoni Barrett’s bravura confessional for The Millions. Step two: go check out this excerpt from his upcoming book in Guernica.
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The Good Kind of Bad
In a Simpsons episode from the late nineties, Lisa Simpson, concerned that her mental skills may be deteriorating, manages to finagle her way onto a local TV news broadcast, where she urges the residents of Springfield to read two books: To Kill a Mockingbird and Harriet the Spy. At first glance, the two novels might not seem to have that much in common, but as Anna Holmes argues in a blog post for The New Yorker, the books share “ideas about the complexity, sophistication, and occasional wickedness of young girls’ imaginations.” (You could also read our own Garth Risk Hallberg on Malcolm Gladwell and To Kill a Mockingbird.)
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Saving Borders Bookstore
I’m a little late to this one, but Ruby Vassar at the Vroman’s Bookstore Blog ran a pretty funny April Fool’s Day post.
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Amazon Releases Its Best 100 Books of 2012
Amazon is kicking off the year-end deluge of lists with its 100 best books of 2012.
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Neo-Luddite
In conversation with New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, Swing Time author Zadie Smith explained why she doesn’t engage in social media: “I want to have my feeling, even if it’s wrong, even if it’s inappropriate, express it to myself in the privacy of my heart and my mind. I don’t want to be bullied out of it,” according to the the Huffington Post. Read Sarah Labrie‘s essay on social media anxiety from our archives.
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Make Fascism Great Again
“There’s still time to look something else up.” Merriam-Webster pleads with word lovers to prevent “fascism” from becoming its word of the year, The Guardian reports. See also: this Lithub piece about the social media genius behind M-W‘s Twitter feed.
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