I wonder if this historical look at the crafting of espresso machines in The Smithsonian will make you think, as I did, about how incredibly Steam Punk a good cappuccino can be.
Elaborate Gilded Contraptions
Talk about Graphic Novels
Why do we strain ourselves to apply scientific methods to the humanities, when the results of such studies always miss the point, asks Maria Konnikova. For those looking to do some field research on the fruits of the growing digital humanities movement before condemning them, the latest issue of the Journal of Digital Humanities is packed with interesting (and chart-filled) reads.
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Close Reading with a Community
Follow Saturday: Poetry Brain, which is the “poetry and literature side of Rap Genius.” You may remember my last shout out for their work – it involved a certain finger being extended to the “stripped down simplicity of the Imagists.”
Curiosities
It’s good to see James Wood covering Richard Price in The New Yorker; and even better to hear Price himself on Fresh Air.And also from The New Yorker, may we recommend Dan Chiasson’s wonderful essay on Frank O’Hara?Luc Sante’s blog pretty much has to be good.Derek, the guy who got both Max and Garth started blogging in the first place, is taking part in a big group blog at the Washington Post covering the Nationals baseball team and its new stadium.With features like this reconsideration of The Gnostic Gospels, the New York Sun is quietly building what may be the country’s best books section.”Growing Up Radical: An Interview with Peter Carey” (via scott)”On Magic Feelism” – n+1 considers Kevin Brockmeier’s The View from the Seventh LayerBoris Kachka profiles Jhumpa Lahiri in New YorkSurreal: “Garfield” minus Garfield. Alternatively, “Garfield” without Garfield’s thought bubbles.Nobody knows if the Kindle is a hit, AP says, but something is happening.A book graveyard in Russia.Languagehat’s specialty: a thoroughly edifying investigation of a phrase pulled out of thin air.American Book Review has developed their own lists of 100 Best Last Lines from Novels (PDF) and 100 Best First Lines from NovelsThe Boston Globe argues that Bringing Down the House, the basis for the new movie 21, is not a work of nonfiction.
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Madame Bovary, Say Wha?
Ruth Franklin rises to the defense of much-maligned (and newly retranslated) Emma Bovary.
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“You were a dream of ice.”
Recommended Reading: Delaney Nolan’s “Buoyed Nets or a Towered Light Spinning”
Lolita, Cover Girl
Lolita has been, for decades, a great inspiration to cover designers, and all those great covers inspired architect John Bertram to hold his own cover design contest to see who could best re-imagine Nabokov’s classic. The resulting competition has now inspired a book, coming in August, with a cover by designers Sulki & Min that references a letter Nabokov sent to his American publisher, Walter J. Minton of Putnam, in April 1959 about the cover design for Lolita. “I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain. And no girls. If we cannot find that kind of artistic and virile painting, let us settle for an immaculate white jacket (rough texture paper instead of the usual glossy kind), with LOLITA in bold black lettering.” More: An interview with Bertram.
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Paprikitis
Our own Garth Risk Hallberg cops to a serious case of “Hungarophilia” in his New York Times review of Tamas Dobozy’s Siege 13.
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