for actors who’ve considered suicide/when the matrix isn’t enuf: Keanu Reeves, who some years ago raised hackles when he played Shakespeare’s melancholy Dane, has now written a book-length poem called Ode to Happiness that pokes fun at excessive melancholy. “I draw a hot sorrow bath/In my despair room,” it begins.
Keanu Reeves, Poet
2012 Costa Award Finalists Announced
The 2012 finalists for the Costa (formerly Whitbread) Book Awards have been anounced. In the “Novel” category, they are Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, Life! Death! Prizes! by Stephen May, The Heart Broke In by James Meek, and Days of the Bagnold Summer by Joff Winterhart. The Costa site has lists of the nominees in all categories.
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George Eliot & Siblings
Recommended reading: Sara Paretsky writes for The Independent on George Eliot‘s The Mill on the Floss and the sibling bond so seldom portrayed in English fiction.
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The Mediated Games.
With the close of the London 2012 Olympic Games come the media think pieces, including this one from The Atlantic, which collects some of its best memes. And this one, on the use of the gif in digital sports coverage, in the Nieman Journalism Lab, and here’s Kevin Nguyen championing BuzzFeed for their Olympics coverage. Also, The Spice Girls.
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Lit on YouTube
For Electric Literature Jennifer Baker interviews Yahdon Israel who hosts the weekly literary interview series LIT on Youtube. On his inspiration for starting the show; “I watch a great deal of interviews on the Breakfast Club, James Lipton’s Inside the Actors Studio, Sway in the Morning, Hot 97, Between Two Ferns. And the people who are seldom interviewed are writers. In many ways being Black has taught me to notice what isn’t there. That lens lends itself to what I notice about pop culture: We’re missing from the conversation. Better put: We’re not included. And by “we” I mean writers.” Watch the show and subscribe, some interviews include Kaitlyn Greenidge, Claire Messaud, Victor LaValle and Jesmyn Ward.
Smartphone Stories
Despite what we might think, smartphones aren’t destroying good reading habits. Rather, smartphones are enabling access to books in developing countries, according to a new study. They allow readers to find books in remote parts of the world without libraries and at a cheaper price.
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Living in Letters
Recommended Reading: On the collected letters and lovers of Iris Murdoch.
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