Recommended Reading: John F. Kennedy’s 1960 essay, “The Soft American,” in which the president warns us about “an increasingly large number of young Americans who are neglecting their bodies.”
JFK on the Decline of Physical Fitness
New Kindles
Amazon announced a new crop of digital reading devices today – bringing their lineup to seven in total. The new $119 Kindle Paperwhite features an “ambient light” display, an eight-week battery life, and adjustable fonts; the 3G version will retail for $179. A new Kindle Fire HD starts at $199 — and one with an 8.9″ display starts at $299. Meanwhile the standard Kindle has dropped in price to $69, and the standard Kindle Fire is down to $159. Additionally, Jeff Bezos announced the debut of a new $1.99 Kindle Serials program: customers can buy a serial once, and seamlessly receive all future installments as they come out. The full rundown of announcements (including this mind-blowing chart) can be found on The Verge‘s liveblog.
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Review of Sonya Chung’s Long for This World
Lisa Peet at Open Letters Monthly / Likefire blog on Millions contributor Sonya Chung‘s novel Long for This World: “When a novel, particularly a debut novel, is referred to as ‘ambitious,’ there’s usually an implicit ‘but’ present… Chung takes on the dynamics of family—what draws it together and what pulls it apart—through the eyes of a number of players, male and female, old and young, Korean and Korean-American. Both her subject matter and her approach are ambitious, to say the least. The only ‘but’ in my reaction, however, is but she pulls it off—and admirably.” Read the full review.
Ulin on King
David Ulin offers a brief consideration of Stephen King. King’s work, Ulin writes, “exposes, with real acuity, a lot about who we are.”
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2012’s Most “Looked Up” Words
According to the Merriam-Webster editors, the two most “looked up” words of 2012 were “capitalism” and “socialism.” Other words in the top ten? “Bigot,” “democracy,” and “meme.”
La Piñata
“The only way to avenge all the things white people did to you was to get your kid into Harvard. You bided your time. You worked your ass off, day after day, year after year.” Our own Marie Myung-Ok Lee has a new short story in Joyland called “La Piñata” (and of course you can also read her in these pages, too).
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A Great Career
Back in May, our own Sonya Chung reviewed All That Is, the first novel in 35 years by A Sport and a Pastime author James Salter. For another viewpoint (courtesy of the LRB), check out James Meek’s assessment of the book alongside Salter’s Collected Stories.
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