After nearly a quarter of a millennium, the Encyclopedia Britannica is ending its print run. While the publication plans to move to a digital subscription based model, and to continue to gather information about the known world, many are sad to note its passing. Roxane Gay offers a particularly heartfelt eulogy: ” it was exciting to open the huge box and pull out the leather bound volumes, so many of them, the pages lined in gold.”
Goodbye, Britannica
California in The New York Times
The Millions‘s own Edan Lepucki, whose first novel California will be released next week, was featured in The New York Times following the promotion of her novel on The Colbert Report. We recommend you read the article, read more from Edan here and here, read the first chapter of California here, and then order the novel ASAP.
Doing More With Less
Nollywood is the name given to Nigeria’s $500 million movie business. For about the same amount of money that was spent on the promotion and production of James Cameron’s Avatar, Nollywood is able to churn out a thousand films each year, trailing only Bollywood and Hollywood in terms of revenue.
New Nicole Krauss Story
The History of Love author Nicole Krauss has a new story out for sale in ebookstores: “An Arrangement of Light“.
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McCann: Reading, Writing and Soccer
The New York Times interviewed Colum McCann about what and who he’s reading, and if you’re looking for a book recommendation this piece is full of them. For more from McCann, be sure to check out his Year in Reading, our review of his novel TransAtlantic, and this reading of his soccer poem.
Friendly Neighborhood
Comics fans will know that a new Marvel storyline may — just possibly — reunite Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. This has, understandably, produced a range of reactions, not least of which is this piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who argues that the two embody a healthy marriage. “[Their] marriage was a rejection of the macho ideal of romance—which reigns even among nerds—and it mirrored and confirmed my own budding sense of what love was at a very young age,” he writes. You could also read Paul Morton on the character of Peter Parker.