Half of all restaurants that open close,” WORD owner Christine Onorati says. On the other hand, Red Lemonade publisher Richard Nash hopes former Borders employees can find ways to continue “operating as the matchmakers of the book ecosystem.”
Booksellers React to Borders’ Bankruptcy
Revolutionary Word
Lewis Lapham, namesake and founder of Lapham’s Quarterly, has compiled a “revolutionary reading list.”
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Poets Ride Free
One Siberian city is offering free subway rides to passengers who can recite “at least two verses from any poem by Alexander Pushkin.” The obvious corollary would be NJ Transit providing free service to passengers capable of singing “Born to Run” in its entirety.
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Welcome, Kate!
This week we are delighted to announce that Kate Gavino is joining The Millions as Social Media Editor! Kate is a writer, illustrator, and creator of the website Last Night’s Reading, which was compiled into a published collection by Penguin Books in 2015. Her second book, Sanpaku, was published by BOOM! Studies in August of 2018. She most recently worked as a social media editor at Brooklyn Public Library.
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Weltsday
Here’s a Rob MacDonald poem about a spelling bee contestant struggling with the word weltschmerz to get you through your Wednesday.
27 letters
Here’s a letter that no longer finds itself at home in our alphabet, & yet we use it everyday.
“Geoff Dyer saw Stalker thirty years ago and hasn’t stopped returning to it.”
Millions contributor Jacob Mikanowski takes a gander at Geoff Dyer’s Zona, and he invoked both Wittgenstein and Bolaño by the third paragraph of his write-up, so you know things are about to get heady.
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