Emily Witt checks out Melville House’s new Hybrid Books for The New York Observer. The publisher says they are “an innovative publishing program that gives print books the features of enhanced eBooks.”
Melville House’s Hybrid Books
Seasonal Affective Disorder with Frankenstein
If this winter is starting to feel endless, take some imagined advice from classic literary characters when dealing with seasonal affective disorder.
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Writing the Suburban Wild
In a longform piece for The Atlantic Diane Saverin writes about Annie Dillard‘s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the predominantly male tradition of wilderness-writing, and how Dillard found and wrote about the wild while living in suburbia. She also wrestles with the question: “if the author conveys a resonant truth, does it matter what experiences led to the realizations?”
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As the Cock Crows
It’s that time of year again – our good friends at The Morning News are back with their annual epic, the Tournament of Books! Head over to TMN now to read round 1, which pits award season favorite Lincoln in the Bardo against Samantha Schweblin‘s Fever Dream (and read our own review of George Saunders‘s much-lauded novel here).
The Greatest Hall Under Heaven Found
Heorot has been found in Lejre, Denmark. Archeologists excavated what could be King Hrothgar’s famous mead hall in Beowulf. No remains of Grendel have been dug up yet.
Sometimes You Feel
Can’t wait for Haruki Murakami’s new novel? You’re in luck: Slate just published an exclusive excerpt from the book. Sample quote: “No matter how quiet and conformist a person’s life seems, there’s always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives.” (You could also read Ben Dooley’s review of 1Q84.)
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Parting Is Blah Blah Blah
Say goodbye to Sadie Stein! Stein, who is moving on after two years as The Paris Review Daily’s correspondent, had this to say: “It is a strange thing to monetize your emotions. Anyone who writes or creates knows this. And the work one does on the Internet feels insubstantial, even by the flimsy standards of intellectual property. Any body of digital work is a funny mixture of ephemeral and immortal, and it’s hard to know how to feel about such an archive.”
Get Educated on SOPA
Tomorrow (January 18th), sites like Wikipedia and Reddit will go dark to protest SOPA. Anyone who’s been online over the past few weeks probably has a vague sense of why this proposed legislation is bad news for the internet as we know it, but Reddit has put up a blog post delving into the language and illustrating the frankly alarming ramifications of its passage.
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