The Times collects the final tweets of a number of celebrities who died this year. They are generally banal but the context turns them poignant.
#LastTweet
True Tragedy
“The way this propaganda works is you take something insane and wrap it in a little bit of truth, and then all those people swallow it because it’s wrapped in a little bit of truth.” Columbia Journalism Review talks to the victims of fake news, from Sandy Hook parents to election overseers. Also worth thinking about in this context, the American usage of modern English.
I’m Not Excited
The “Albums of Our Lives” series over at The Rumpus is a consistent source of entertaining essays. This week’s contribution, which focuses on Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City, is no aberration.
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Salvador Dalí Illustrates the Western Canon
Few people know about Salvador Dalí's illustrations for famous works of the Western canon, including Don Quixote, Macbeth, Paradise Lost, and even The Bible.
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Edge of the Earth
Cheryl Strayed’s Wild is probably the best-known recent example of a memoir that centers on a journey through a harsh landscape. There’s another one that deserves your attention, too — Kathleen Winter’s Boundless, which tells the tale of the writer’s voyage through the icebound Northwest Passage. At The Guardian, a review of the memoir.
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A Review in Comics
Book reviews are great and all, but even we sometimes feel they’re missing something. Enter Kevin Thomas, whose HORN! illustrated reviews for The Rumpus are beautiful and informative in under 9 panels. Compare his pieces on Roxane Gay‘s An Untamed State or Leslie Jamison‘s The Empathy Exams to our reviews here and here, and be sure to check out the just-published HORN! The Collected Reviews.
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A Life in Books
“Reading is a type of reckoning with the self. That may sound like a simplistic platitude, but platitudes exist only because they are true, our self-serving intellectual mirrors be damned.” Cher Tan shares a lifetime’s reading history with Catapult, tracing her trajectory from “[k]eeping up with the boys” during high school to this past year, in which she made a personal pact to read only books written by people of color. Pair with our own Nick Ripatrazone in conversation with six authors on their childhood reading.
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