The ever-entertaining writers at The Bygone Bureau have published their very first ebook, a collection of food writing chronicling everything from a Micronesian pig roast to a Chilean bread riot titled The Biggest Yam.
Now Serving: A Delicious Slice of the Blogosphere
Orhan Pamuk Discusses Gezi Park
Pankaj Mishra caught up with Orhan Pamuk in the midst of Turkey’s Gezi Park turmoil, and though the Nobel laureate was at first “reluctant to speak of the protests,” he occasionally let down his guard. In those instances, writes Mishra, Pamuk “revealed a shrewd political mind and a confidence about the new social consciousness the demonstrators represent.”
Dystopian (Non)Fictions
Alexandra Alter traces how “a bleak, apocalyptic strain of post-revolutionary literature has taken root” in the Middle East following the Arab Spring.
Just Stop There
What do Susan Sontag, Joan Didion and Year in Reading alumna Margaret Atwood have in common? They’re all great writers — and they all had only one kid.
Straight to the Moon
Looking for something to watch this weekend? Might I recommend Moon (2009), starring Sam Rockwell? It’s available for free on YouTube.
A Beginner’s Guide to Drugs For Girls
Tasteless and horrifying–nay, even a sign of the apocalypse–or rather excellent advice for college-bound young ladies? You decide: Vice Magazine‘s “A Beginner’s Guide to Drugs For Girls.” (A taste: “Here are some pointers for the beginners out there so you can get high without becoming that girl slumped in the corner of the night bus with vomit all over your shoes and lockjaw so bad your teeth have all snapped in half.”)
Glamour’s Page 194 Girl
At Glamour‘s blog, the fashion magazine shot heard round the world: a nude photo of a girl who–gasp!–wears a size 12 and doesn’t have a six-pack. And, she looks happy. Apparently, this is what readers of fashion magazines have been waiting for.
Colors: Definitions and Names
Kory Stamper, one of the lexicographers responsible for Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, describes the pleasures and poetry to be found in the Third Edition’s “color definitions.” Take vermillion for example, which is listed as “a variable color averaging a vivid reddish orange that is redder, darker, and slightly stronger than chrome orange, redder and darker than golden poppy, and redder and lighter than international orange.” (Related: how colors got their names; who names colors what.)