In an article for Slate, Farhad Manjoo asks whether or not Google+ squandered its chance to compete with Facebook.
Too Little, Too Late
You’d like to think that you’re immune to the stuff…
The lights are on / but you're not home. / Your mind / is not your own. / Your heart sweats (?) / Your teeth grind. . . . You might as well face it / You're addicted to Twitter.
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Tell Us More About Yourself
A few weeks ago, I wrote about an event at which Don’t Kiss Me author Lindsay Hunter teamed up with songwriter Holly Miranda for an interesting reading-cum-concert. Now, at The Nervous Breakdown, the writer conducts an interview with none other than herself.
True Detective: “where time is a flat circle”
In addition to its overt references to Robert Chambers’s The King in Yellow, HBO’s breakout hit, True Detective, seems also to draw from the work of a self-published poet named Dennis McHale. Or is it the other way around? (Bonus: Lincoln Michel drew up a reading list of southern gothic books similar in tone to the HBO series.)
A Bookish Jurassic Park
Recommended reading: before you head to the theaters for the latest Jurassic Park film, make sure you know the series's bookish roots.
Philip Roth to Appear on Colbert
What do you do after you’ve retired but before you’ve won a Nobel Prize? You get interviewed by Stephen Colbert, apparently. (Bonus: How have other authors retired in the past? Let us count the ways.)
That’s So Miami
The organizers of this year’s O, Miami Poetry Festival are holding an online poetry contest entitled “That’s So Miami.” To participate, submit a poem that begins or ends with the phrase, “that’s so Miami.” Entries – which can be culled from both Twitter and Instagram – are accepted in English and Spanish (duh), and submissions are posted daily on the organization’s new Tumblr. For a rundown of the festival’s other April events, check out their Facebook page.
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The New Yorker on the TSA
The New Yorker posts its airport security cartoons, from 1938 to the present.
Tell Us a Story
Why do the British tell the best children’s stories? Perhaps because their culture has remained in touch with its pagan folklore, whereas in the United States, more pragmatic tales of morality, Christian obedience, and bootstrap-lifting rose to prominence. Also, picture books: general good thing for children or roadmap to total the moral collapse of society?