Writing about European immigration laws for the London Review of Books, Jeremy Harding drops this excellent line: “Perhaps we should agree to think of rights and values as limited resources, and admit that Europe is now caught in a bitter struggle over who can or can’t access them.”
Europe at Bay
Why I am Leaving Two Links in this Curiousity.
First Greg Smith aired his parting grievances with Goldman Sachs in the New York Times, and now M.B. Cluckerton is leaving the Muppets.
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In The Shadow of Odessa
Craig Fehrman reviews Keith O’Brien’s Outside Shot, a book which follows the 2009-10 boys’ basketball team at Scott County High School in Georgetown, Kentucky. O’Brien’s book is much in the mold of Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights, writes Fehrman, in that it’s concerned with a “troubled town, precarious season, political resonance” – but it’s also a book that falters under the legacy of its predecessor.
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Words, Quantitatively
Google has just released a tool that lets you see how frequently certain words have appeared in the millions of books from all eras that Google has scanned. It’s pretty neat. Here are some presidents, technologies, and the meaning of life.
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Thanks for Nothing, Dickens
Want to publish anonymously (and then stay that way)? Be thankful you’re not friends with Charles Dickens.
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Oops Never Mind
Thriller writer James Patterson was set to publish a novel in November about an attempt on his author colleague Stephen King‘s life, subtly titled The Murder of Stephen King. Following reports of real-life threats against King, however, the book has been scuttled. After you’ve read that tale of high dudgeon, see also our editor-in-chief Lydia Kiesling’s essay, “Everything I Know About America I Learned from Stephen King.”
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Football Book Club: ‘The Case Against Satan’
It’s a brand new week and Football Book Club is reading Ray Russell’s The Case Against Satan. For those of you scoring at home, that’s an exorcism novel written by a former executive editor of Playboy. Plus posts about Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction and Carmen Giménez Smith’s Milk and Filth.
Two Stars
“Few countries that debuted in the 1700s have been as controversial or long running (it’s into its 237th season now) as America. It may not have the staying power of perennial favorites such as China or the credibility of indie darlings such as Finland, but America has proven that it can at least make some cultural impact. It’s not the best, but hey, they can’t all be Louie.”
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