Common dreams, common bookstores: “I went home with…the BookWoman bumper sticker, which reads: ‘Support Your Feminist Bookstore — She Supports You.'”
A Bookstore of Common Prayer
Valleyspeak
Curious to know what the new Most Irritating Word is? Not many people agree on the number one offender, but for a while a top choice was “literally,” which evolved so much over the past few decades that the Oxford English Dictionary revised its official definition. At Slate, Katy Waldman proposed that we give the title to “amazeballs.” Now, in The New Republic, Judith Shulevitz makes the case for “disruptive,” the scourge of the tech world.
The Particular Pleasures of Literature
At 3 Quarks Daily, Akeel Bilgrami’s essay on the pleasures of literature: “To understand what is special about literature is not to delegate the emotions to literature while retaining thought for philosophy and science. The idea is to find in the distinctly expressive function of literature, a refusal of that tired dualism.” (via Book Bench)
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Ask a Grown Woman
High school girls “Ask a Grown Woman” what it’s like to date someone of the same gender. The answer is surprisingly honest.
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The Belgian Big Bad Wolf
Remember when Little Red Riding Hood was eaten by a hyena? Wait, that’s not the folktale we know. Whether or not Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten depends on where you hear the famous folktale, but anthropologist Jamie Tehrani discovered the origins of the scarlet-hooded girl — Belgium.
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Poolside Romance
Recommended Reading: Roxane Gay’s short story about a summer romance, “The Year I Learned Everything,” at Rookie. “He’s the best-looking of the bunch so you can imagine how ugly his friends are.”