“Goodreads lets me capture and disperse impressions that occur as I read. I tend to track the sounds I make when reading, the chortles, gasps, growls, and LOLs. I try to figure out why I might not have liked aspects of a book, looking under the hood in a workshoppy way…” Lee Klein offers a defense of Goodreads and good criticism over at Full Stop.
On Goodreads, On Good Criticism
Silverstein in the News
Shel Silverstein is the subject of two articles this week courtesy of The Atlantic and The New York Times.
Gender Trouble
There’s a reason Hemingway and Fitzgerald are usually thought of as being opposites on the masculinity spectrum. Hemingway, he of the grand works about boxing and bullfighting, is perhaps the patron saint of literary manhood, while Fitzgerald was often the definition of refinement. Yet their actual identities were a little more complicated than our images of them suggest. At The Paris Review Daily, a look at how they were thought of as “real men” -- or not.
High Fantasy
You may have heard that Kazuo Ishiguro recently published his first novel in more than ten years. The Buried Giant, which takes place in Arthurian England, is a departure for Ishiguro, a work of overt fantasy. At Slate, our own Mark O’Connell provides his take on the book. You could also read our own Lydia Kiesling’s review.
●
●
Japanese E-Book Aversion
It's hard to believe that a country with video games like this would be slow to adopt a new technology, but a recent survey indicates that Japanese people are not keen on e-books.
●
●
Something To Think About This Sunday
Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo author Mark Bowden explains the "hardest job in football" in this Atlantic article from 2009.
●
●
James Tate in Hypertext
This week in book-related infographics: a hypertext tribute to the late poet James Tate, organized by Electric Literature and featuring "personal memories of Tate, commentary about his work, and recordings of some of his most meaningful poems."
●
●