It started with Mike Daisey, and eventually led to a series of profiles in The New York Times, but ultimately Apple launched a serious audit of their Chinese sub-contractors at the Foxconn Technology plants. Now, thanks to increased awareness, those workers will see 16-25% raises in pay.
Foxconn Workers Get Pay Raise
Resurrecting Shelley
Early on in her career, the poet Muriel Spark decided that Mary Shelley was criminally underrated as a writer. In bringing the Frankenstein author the fame she deserved, Spark wrote a biography, distanced Shelley from her famed poet husband and labeled her “the founder of science fiction.” (Related: our own Lydia Kiesling on Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.) (h/t Arts & Letters Daily)
●
●
Curiosities: Bootleg Translations
Rumors of John Cheever's death? Greatly exaggerated.HarperCollins sets out to test the proposition that there really is no such thing as bad publicity.BHL rips Valkyrie and Tom Cruise.Maud lauds Marlon James, author of The Book of Night Women.The New York Public Library names Millions guest contributor Sana Krasikov a finalist for its Young Lions award. Congratulations, Sana!More Intelligent Life interviews Jon Fasman, another Young Lion in waiting and author of The Unpossessed CityAlso at MiL: Lorin Stein wants a stimulus plan for book critics. (Hear! Hear!)Millions-fave Paul Theroux interviewed by the Boston Globe: "People say to me: How can I become a writer? I always say: one, leave home; two, tell the truth."xkcd takes on the Kindle."Jack Kerouac's 'lost' novel The Sea is My Brother, which he wrote during his years as a merchant seaman, is to be published in its entirety for the first time."Soon there will be a literary prize for everyone: "The St. Francis College Literary Prize is designed for a fourth published book of fiction." ($50,000!)The strangest title shortlistVia Gwenda, the Wikipedia find of the week: "A book curse was the most widely-employed and effective method of discouraging the thievery of manuscripts during the medieval period."The best reasoning yet for why the Kindle/"Text-to-Speech" uproar is dumb. Meanwhile, Amazon backs down."I", "we", "two" and "three" the oldest English words.A resourceful group of Chinese enthusiasts creates bootleg translations of every issue of The Economist.Shark-jumping: "HarperCollins Pays Big Advance For A Book Of... Tweets"Stuff White Readers Should Like
All the things that are in me are in you
Lev Grossman discusses inheritable libraries, the similarities between print books and wifi, and the pleasures of the codex in this video.
●
●
Very, Very Direct
Ta-Nehisi Coates isn’t exactly sure why white people love his book so much. It is indisputable that they do love it, though; Coates’ Between the World and Me is a runaway bestseller and he is also the recipient of one of this year’s MacArthur Foundation “Genius grants.”
Try, Try Again
Millions contributor Jessica Francis Kane gives an account of the first time she had a story accepted into a literary magazine. Kane’s short story collection, This Close, hit shelves last March.
●
●
Magical Thinking
After five years, Lev Grossman has released the final book in his Magicians trilogy, aptly reviewed in the Sunday Times by our own Edan Lepucki. At Slate, the Awl cofounder, Year in Reading alum and novelist Choire Sicha looks back on the series as a whole. After reading through all three entries, Choire poses a simple but hard-to-answer question: is main character Quentin truly the central figure of the books? It might also be a good time to read our interview with Grossman.
●
●