While the federal government is turning to video games to get kids into the math and sciences, back in the day comic books provided a near-direct link to young minds. But the medium wasn’t warmly received by the older generation (sound familiar?), and the company debated whether it was worth taking a hit with parents in order to appeal to their kids.
Teaching STEM: Comics to Video Games
“I was sad as I began to think that I might be gay.”
Recommended Listening: Andrew Solomon’s Moth story, “My Post-Nuclear Family.” (Solomon’s work has previously been shouted out in our Year in Reading series by Millions staffers Hannah Gersen and Edan Lepucki.)
The Value of Difficulty
“When we read a book that requires that effort — when the act of reading becomes rigorous and self-aware, rather than effortless and transparent — we get to have a history with what we’ve given ourselves to, a history etched into us by the demanding friction of its difficulty.” Zoë Heller and Leslie Jamison debate whether or not we overvalue difficult literature in The New York Times.
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One of Ireland’s Lesser Known Sons
For those aching for more Ireland in the wake of Bloomsday, here's a piece about noir-master Raymond Chandler's childhood in Waterford.
Lish’s Legacy
Gordon Lish is famous for being Raymond Carver's very involved editor, but his work has never been thoroughly considered before. David Winters, Greg Gerke, and Jason Lucarelli have set out to change that with a roundtable discussion of Lish's legacy. "What can we learn from Lish? Well, we can take away a set of techniques, to be sure; 'rules,' if rules are useful to us. But we can also salvage something that looks almost lost in our time: a sense of the real, lived stakes of writing, its risks and its rewards."
Ask Murakami
Can't get enough Murakami? In the lead-up to the announcement of this year's Nobel Prize for literature, Dan over at "How to Japonese" will post a short, new Murakami translation each week. The translations come from an unpublished (in English) collection of Murakami's answers to his readers' questions. This week, Murakami tackles safe sex.
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A Bit Much
First came the reviews. Naturally, reviews of these reviews followed. Then, in furtherance of a pattern that was getting pretty weird at this point, somebody wrote a review of review reviews.
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‘Tis the season
'Tis the season for book gifting and sales! Danielle Dutton's Dorothy, a publishing project, is offering a special holiday deal on its two seasons of terrific books.
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Where’s Ursula?
Recommended Reading: “Ursula’s Curse,” an excerpt from a forthcoming Eugene Lim novel. The piece’s protagonist seems less concerned with the end of his life (and maybe the human race) than he is with remembering an artist who tried to reach “a limit to the art market’s baseness.”
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