Here’s a fascinating article by Aatish Bhatia about “how we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains.” Grab a seat; this is a good one.
On Colors and the Mind
Quick Links
A teacher's charming poem in which he winds the imaginative grammar and spelling of his students into a feast of clever words. (via)A cornucopia of palindromes. "Rot can rob a born actor" and many, many more. And don't miss the Palindrome Drama at the end of the page.Stephen Schenkenberg looks at how people find his blog... "how+do+you+construct+buried+alive+escape+tunnel" ???The 13-number ISBN is the book industry's Y2K. For more details, see my post from 2004.Ed plumbs bad Amazon reviews, a never-ending ending font of humor.
Misunderstood Langages
Recommended Listening: Over at PBS News Hour, Joan Naviyuk Kane talks about crafting poems based on a single word in Inupiaq, one of the languages spoken by the Native Alaskan people.
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Google Books: Embargo Breaker
At The Washington Post, Craig Fehrman points out that FSG inadvertently broke its own embargo on Jimmy Carter's White House Diary when a preview of the book showed up on Google Books.
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Uber Modern Bookstores
The ideal bookstore is hard to pin down. Until recently the consensus seemed to lean towards old, slightly dusty and pleasantly chaotic, but these modern bookstores full of sleek white cases and clean lines have us reconsidering.
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Dostoevsky Subway Murals in Moscow
NPR reports on the controversial Moscow subway murals depicting violent scenes from Dostoevsky’s books - and the public concern that the murals will make people "afraid to ride the subway." (via Book Bench)
Introducing Stephen King
It seems slightly incredible that anyone doesn't know who Stephen King is, but sometimes "it's precisely those whom we imagine we know, in broad stereotypical terms, who require introductions," as Joyce Carol Oates put it. Luckily, The Oyster Review has provided a handy reader's guide to Stephen King, covering his works from Carrie to On Writing.
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