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.
Carrots: Lies and Truth
When I was young, my mother always told me I should eat my carrots so my vision would improve. For twenty four years, I’ve obeyed. But now it seems I’ve been living a lie all this time. (Bonus carrot link: the most common type used to be purple, but orange was normalized to please the Dutch monarchy.)
Why Reading
“Unlike, say, skimming a page of headlines, reading a book (of any genre) forces your brain to think critically and make connections from one chapter to another, and to the outside world. When you make connections, so does your brain, literally forging new pathways between regions in all four lobes and both hemispheres. Over time, these neural networks can promote quicker thinking and may provide a greater defense against the worst effects of cognitive decay.” Readers Digest compiles the latest research about why you should read (via Book Riot).
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Rowling to Receive PEN Service Award
J. K. Rowling will receive the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award “for her efforts to fight inequality and censorship”. Rowling joins the likes of Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, and Tom Stoppard. Our own Garth Risk Hallberg reflects on the magic of the Harry Potter series with librarian Cynthia Oakes.
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How the Nobel Odds Are Made
Ladbrokes, the popular bookmaker, has correctly predicted the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature with “a 50 percent accuracy rate” over the past eight years. This remarkable record is noteworthy because the oddsmakers do not actually read any of the books, and they do not go about “forming an opinion about the relative merits of each author.” Instead, the folks responsible for each year’s odds “appl[y] a numerical value to things like industry chatter, an author’s nationality, historical precedent.” So, that in mind, how confident do you feel about Haruki Murakami’s chances?
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Sounding Off
Shakespeare conspiracy theorists might still wonder who the real playwright was, but we do know what he would've sounded like. Linguist David Crystal and his son, actor Ben Crystal, demonstrate the original pronunciation of the Bard's best. Bonus: An interview with Ben on the research behind the pronunciation.
Seeing Beyond the Story
“When she began the cancer memoir, it was the fact of the writing, more than what was to be written, that mattered.” On Jenny Diski’s way of seeing beyond the story.
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Reading from the Man Booker Shortlist
We recently announced the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize. At Granta, you can read an excerpt from Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways, included on the list.
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