The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses is hosting their annual Spelling Bee Fundraiser on October 30th. New Yorker editor Ben Greenman will host the event, which will pit Jonathan Ames, Amor Towles and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures author Emma Straub against one another (and more) in a battle of lexicographic perspicacity. (Can you state the language of origin, please?) The event will be judged by none other than Jesse Sheidlower, editor of the inimitable Oxford English Dictionary.
Which Author Spells The Best?
Doing the Academic Stuff
“You’re never going to write well for a wider audience if you think it’s less worthwhile, less difficult than doing the academic stuff.” Jo Livingstone interviews David Wolf, commissioning editor of The Guardian Long Read.
Homes for Old Kindles
Tired of that ancient Kindle sitting around, gathering dust? Now you can trade it in.
Laura Hillenbrand
Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit and Unbroken, discusses her life with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. “I’m looking for a way out of here. I can’t have it physically, so I’m going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination.”
Thursday Links
Bud offers a charming man about town piece that touches on the intersection of technology and culture.One of my biggest on-the-job challenges back when I was a bookseller was recommending books for finicky teenagers. In an effort to take some of the guesswork out of this endeavor, Anita Silvey, a professor of children’s literature at Simmons College in Boston, wrote 500 Great Books for Teens. Scripps news prints 20 of those recommendations, including The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, and, of course, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.Germany is prosecuting seven men for burning a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank, in a case that highlights the symbolic power of books.And in Trenton, NJ, librarians are accusing a library accountant of refusing to purchase the novel Whore by Tanika Lynch for the library’s collection because “he objected to the title.”
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Replacement Burrito
Recommended Reading: This moving essay on secrecy, shame, and binging by Michael Sinert over at The Rumpus: “Our task is to de-son-of-a-bitch all this.”
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The Rebellious English Major
In last week’s Brandeis commencement speech, Leon Wieseltier argued that never has there been a moment in American life when the humanities were respected less but needed more. “In recent years I have come to regard a commitment to the humanities as nothing less than an act of intellectual defiance, of cultural dissidence,” he said.
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“Maybe being mesmerized is the last thing you remember”
“What I didn’t know then was that these decorations evolved from the Jewish menora, the Hebrew festival of lights. I don’t think my mother knew that either, but if she did she never mentioned it. And I certainly never contemplated the resemblance of a sleigh to a cradle. A sleigh is basically a very large cradle.” Mary Ruefle on Christmas trees.
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