What’s your favorite form of punctuation? R. L. Stine is partial to the em-dash.
Do Emoji Really Count?
The Will to Climb
The Seattle Times reviews The Will to Climb by Bainbridge Island mountaineer Ed Viesturs (with David Roberts), which chronicles what it takes to climb Annapurna, a particularly challenging Himalayan peak. Viesturs appears tonight at Town Hall Seattle.
The Readability Myth
Is readability a myth? In an article for The Atlantic Noah Berlatsky argues that there are no “easy” or “difficult” books, or rather that these are relative terms – a book that gives one person fits may be light reading for someone else. His argument pairs interestingly with our own Emily Colette Wilkinson‘s “Difficult Books” series.
A Story of Decline
Last month, in a review for The Millions, Chris Barsanti called George Packer’s The Unwinding an “awe-inspiring X-Ray of the modern American soul.” Now, in The Guardian, Sukhdev Sandhu calls the book “decent, meticulous and concerned,” though it could have benefited from the “roiling prose-fire of Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi.”
Read Dickens Now!
Charles Dickens turns 200 in February, which is one good explanation for two new biographies (Charles Dickens: A Life) and (Becoming Dickens) appearing just in time. But even more importantly, why is now the perfect time to read him? Here’s one hint: the man’s vast social imagination.
Daily Dose of Fiction
101 Words has an ongoing flash fiction series, featuring the works of four writers every Sunday. This week’s edition includes a story by our own Michael Bourne, originally published in Tin House.