When Pleasanton mom Siah Fried and her co-author wrote Tales from Swankville, a book about hyper-competitive parenting in suburbia, they didn’t expect their neighbors to take it so personally.
Tales from Swankville
Japanese E-Book Aversion
It's hard to believe that a country with video games like this would be slow to adopt a new technology, but a recent survey indicates that Japanese people are not keen on e-books.
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Ellis Interviewed
Ahead of the release of Imperial Bedrooms, Vice has an interview with Bret Easton Ellis. "All my friends moved to Brooklyn. The only people I know in Manhattan are rich, and it just seems like, you know, the party was fun, but it’s kind of over for me. LA seemed to be the place to land."
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The Empathy Exams
"[G]uess what, spending hours of your spare time plowing through some dense and symbol-laden carnival of affectation and ambiguity only makes you resentful of the publishing industry that pushed the book on you in the first place." Alex Balk at The Awl takes the piss out of recent studies that have suggested reading literary fiction might make us better people. Writer John Vaillant, whom we interviewed last year, might disagree.
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Javier Sicilia’s Movement
Mexican poet Javier Sicilia founded the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity as a means of combating the horrific slew of drug-related murders plaguing his country. As he explains in this translated letter to Mexico's government, his cause is personally motivated.
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Red Herring
Languagehat points to the curious origins of the idiom "red herring."