First a judge ordered a man to write a book report, and now Brazil is offering inmates sentence reductions for every book they read. When did reading shift from pleasure to punishment?
Reading As Punishment
“Stare at us stoned like eyes determined”
Rage Against the Machine frontman Zach De La Rocha has penned a poem dedicated to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Lacking Lacks
Henrietta Lacks is finally getting some credit for her genome’s contribution to science. The subject of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was formally recognized by the US National Institutes of Health for her HeLa cells.
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The Familiar Foreigner
“Familiar, well-behaved stories are dressed in nice book covers and sent to our bookstores; from there they march to our homes in an orderly manner.” On Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and how publishing understands the immigrant narrative. Pair with our review of Adichie’s second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun.
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A Bit of Advice
Recommended reading: Andrew Solomon draws from Rilke‘s Letters to a Young Poet and gives some advice for young writers. Pair with our own look at “the best advice writers ever received.“
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Covering Lolita
Disappointed by how few of the dozens of official book cover designs of Nabokov’s Lolita “correspond thematically to the novel,” blog Venus febriculosa is holding a book cover design contest (pdf) to create a new cover for Lolita and is awarding a $350 prize. (Thx, John)
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All Places Are Temporary
Is he a vandal? Is he a post-Situationist? Maybe the text-art Banksy? Who knows. One thing is for sure – Scottish poet Robert Montgomery is taking his poetry to the streets.
The Pulitzer Underdog
The unlikely path of Tinkers from manuscript in a drawer to Pulitzer glory.
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Wow – not punishment but rehabilitation of the highest order!
I have to agree with Meredith. Being rewarded for doing something doesn’t really sound like punishment. Rather it sounds more like a reward for putting real effort into their own rehabilitation.
Sounds like a fabulous idea to me. Wouldn’t reading & writing book reports be a great alternative to solitary confinement?
I don’t see the sentence reduction as a punishment, but as an inducement to better themselves.