Speaking of podcasts: our own Epic Fail hits the Culture File podcast. Listen up!
Epic Listening
Authors Upon Authors
The Guardian asked a bunch of authors, including Hilary Mantel, Geoff Dyer, and Ian Rankin, which books they “regularly reread and which novels they are desperate to unlock the secrets of.” Check out John Banville’s abiding fixation on the works on F. Scott Fitzgerald.
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Going Bananas Over a Piece of Cake
Ever wonder where the phrase “worth his salt” came from? How about “spill the beans”? At The Smithsonian Magazine, Lisa Bramen traces the origins of food-related idioms. (via.)
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Good Sports
Isn’t it lovely when books and sports coexist (somewhat) peacefully? In the spirit of the Major League Baseball ALCS playoff between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Kansas City Royals, the Twitter accounts of the Toronto and Kansas City public libraries took to the internet to air their grievances. Unfortunately for the folks in Toronto, Kansas City went on to win the game and advance to the World Series with the New York Mets. For more on the intersection of sports and reading, check out the Football Book Club.
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Calm Before the Storm
Huzzah! 336 issues of the avant-garde magazine The Storm (1910-1932) have just been digitized and are available for download. Some notable contributors to The Storm included Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and many others.
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