The word “whom” appears “just 53 times out of every million [spoken] words,” according to the Corpus of Contemporary American English. This does not bode well for members of future generations – some of whom may be fond of formality.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Silence, Please
For everyone who believes that “being out and reading is better than staying home and planning to read,” The New Yorker‘s Andrea Denhoed may have found just the thing: silent reading parties.
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A Campus Novel Classic
University Of Chicago Press has come out with a new edition of a somewhat forgotten classic in the campus novel genre. Randall Jarrell was a National Book Award-winning poet who wrote only one novel, Pictures from an Institution, about the fictional Benton College. The Kenyon Review published the opening of the novel in its Winter 1953 issue. It begins: “Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and spoken for the other.”
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Out of Service
Recommended viewing: Katrina Whalen’s short film adaptation of Charles Portis’s “I Don’t Talk Service No More.” Pair with our own Bill Morris’s review of Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany.
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Curios
NPR offers a nifty gallery that accompanies the publication of this quirky collection: Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.The Coen Brothers have signed on to helm the film version of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. The big-screen version of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found (though it’s reportedly been in the works for years).Elsewhere in book-to-movie news, Ian McEwen is pleased with the film version of his novel Atonement.Poet and critic Reginald Shepherd reflects on becoming a blogger. “Until a couple of years ago, I barely knew what a blog was, and certainly had never seen one,” he writes. But it proved quite fruitful: “it sometimes seems that my blog has done more to raise my profile than all my more-than-fifteen years of copious publishing put together.”Five reasons not to give up books (the paper ones, as opposed the digital counterparts.)I think it’s an ad for a video game, but this video contains some masterful soccer kung fu.None of us at The Millions is affiliated with Princeton, but this list of the school’s most influential alums is interesting in a random sort of way.The new half-hour HBO show In Treatment is a free podcast at the iTunes store. The show stars Gabriel Byrne as a psychotherapist and each episode represents a single session with one of five patients.The writers’ strike is over. The resulting carnage on the schedules for all your favorite shows is laid out here.
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The Joy of Cooking
Saveur Magazine has published its annual top 100 food and cooking joys of the year. This time, it’s a reader-created list, and it doesn’t disappoint, from #12, The Burmese Tea Leaf Salad to #43, College Dining Hall Cooks. (Via.)
Charlie and the Chocolate Bookstore
Chocolate can cure a lot of things but what about the ailing bookstore? Belgian researchers have found that bookstores that smell like chocolate boost sales, especially of romance novels. What about bacon?
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A Boor
Recommended Reading: This primer on how to explain without mansplaining.
Holy Listicle Batman!
The Guardian has published a top ten list of superheros and it is official: Batman is the greatest. Would Spider-Man have been bumped up to number one if the latest movie had less Peter Parker, and more Jean-Ralphio?
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