Our own Mark O’Connell has an excellent piece over on The New Yorker‘s books blog detailing his propensity to abandon burritos books, even good ones, halfway through.
Finish that book. Finish that burrito.
The Perils of Being a Hermit
It might not be a good idea to tell this to bookish readers, but it looks like loneliness can kill you.
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Matthew Salesses Interviewed
Get to know Matthew Salesses, whose story “High Schools, or How to Be Asian American” we shouted out a few months back.
How Many Loans Did This Take?
Meet Michael Nicholson, the 71-year-old Michigan man who’s earned 29 college degrees. I guess somebody hasn’t read the latest issue of n+1.
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
“I couldn’t put the books down. Now that so many of us complain of diminished attention spans— our own as well as our companions’—it’s worth asking what has made millions of readers willing to suspend their disbelief—to suspend their selves—for thousands of pages.” Why have so many people gone gaga for Ferrante and Knausgaard? We have our own theories as well.
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Degrees of Separation
Urmila Seshagiri writes for Public Books about Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words in its original Italian. As she explains it, “the dual-language Italian-English format literalizes the very ‘separazione totale’ that is In altre parole’s subject, reminding us, page by page, of potential losses.” Pair with Hannah Gersen’s Millions review of the book.
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