From Jared Fanning, a charming graphic of the world’s 10 most read books.
Bookshelf of the Masses
Yoko Ogawa on Literature as a Means of Remembering
Author Yoko Ogawa reflects on the literature published following the atomic bombings in Japan during World War II.
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The Missing Books
Featuring missing titles from Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Roberto Bolaño, Vladimir Nabokov et al., The Missing Books is a project by Scott Esposito to assemble “a curated directory of books that do not exist, but should.” If that puts you in the mood for further Borgesian hijinks, consider Sam Allingham‘s piece about a summer spent cataloguing books in a university library basement.
A Borrowing Boom
“Between 1990 and 2014, visits to public libraries grew by a whopping 181%. For context, the population of the United States increased by 28% during that period.” Why the library boom? (via The Digital Reader) See also this paean by Daniel Penev in our own pages,“The Library Is Dead. Long Live the Library!”
Short Stories for the 305
WLRN-Miami Herald News is soliciting writers of flash fiction, extremely short nonfiction, or prosaic poetry for “VERY brief” stories: “As in 305 words or less — ‘3-0-5’ being at one time the area code for entire state of Florida.”
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What to Do with a Nazi Monument?
A group of Austrian artists aims to “reconfigure and recontextualize” a memorial to Austrian poet Josef Weinheber, who engaged in Nazi activities and wrote numerous pro-Hitler propaganda pieces. Michael Kaminer caught up with Eduard Freudmann, the leader of the Vienna-based push for recontextualization, who hopes to spark a debate “about how to proceed with the … artistic reconfiguration of a Nazi monument.”
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