As libraries struggle to survive in the UK, community-based lending libraries are sprouting up to fill in the gaps. The Society of Authors is threatening to take legal action against these libraries after discovering that they are not required to pay any royalties to authors.
Between a Rock and a Bookless Place
A Really Quick Exorcism
It's that time of the week wherein I remind you about the hilarious series over at Electric Literature, "Ted Wilson Reviews the World." This week, Ted tries his best to remain impartial while reviewing that one sneeze he had: "The sneeze I had came on so quickly I didn’t have time to put my hand over my face and the spray went everywhere. It made me wish I had been standing over a salad bar so there would have been a sneeze guard handy. That’s why if I’m about to sneeze at Olive Garden I immediately sprint for the salad bar."
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Medieval Advice
Need to know how to tell if someone is or is not dead? How to leave a party gracefully? How to avoid the plague? Luckily the writers of the Middle Ages had a how-to book for everything, even if that advice does include killing bed bugs by "Spread[ing] Gun-powder, beaten small, about the crevices of your bedstead" and then lighting it.
Haiti’s Resilience: A Literary List
Yesterday marked eight years since a devastating earthquake struck Haiti and a few days ago Trump put the country back in the news (but not in an reflective or uplifting way). Looking to learn more about Haiti sans racist rhetoric? The New York Times has "three books by Haitian writers that provide insight into the country’s history of struggle and resistance." Find the list here.
“And then later how we were terrible again”
Recommended Reading: Guernica’s excerpt from Matt Bell’s upcoming novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods.
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Anxiety or Discipline?
Recommended Viewing: This installment of The Paris Review's "My First Time" series, in which poet Ben Lerner remembers "working under the sign of crisis" and attempting to find a publisher for his first book, The Lichtenberg Figures. A couple of Lerner-related pieces from The Millions: a review of his newest novel, 10:04, and a Year in Reading from back in 2014.
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Digital Detox
David Roberts spent 12 hours in front of a screen everyday, frequently hit the daily tweet limit, and saw "every sunset as a potential Instagram." So he decided to quit the internet for a year and lived to tell the tale for Outside. Yet disconnecting isn't as easy as signing off Twitter. "One striking feature of the digital-self-help literature is that it treats distraction, overload, and frazzlement almost entirely as personal challenges. If you’re stressed out and unable to concentrate, you’re not enlightened enough. Meditate harder." Pair with: What's it like to be from the last generation to remember life before the internet and our own Edan Lepucki's (slightly shorter) social media detox.
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