“The idea was that the words would form a meaningful haiku – or ‘haik-ewe’ as Valerie called it – however they were viewed on the backs of the grazing sheep.”
Sheepoetry
The Perils of Word Aversion
Moist-haters, unite: why do some people despise the sound of certain words?
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Edan Lepucki Sells California
Congratulations to Millions staffer Edan Lepucki, who sold her debut novel California to Little, Brown at auction this week. The novel, which Edan refers to as “Novel #2” in her article “What Happens When a Book Doesn’t Sell,” will follow a young married couple grappling with a post-apocalyptic world. Consider us extra relieved given Edan’s proclamation in that article: “And this new book, it will be published. If it doesn’t, well, I’ll just die.”
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Shelf Life
"'You can tell how serious people are by looking at their books,' Susan Sontag told Sigrid Nunez." The meaning of book shelves.
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Translating Lorem Ipsum
Nick Richardson has some fun on the London Review of Books blog by discussing the challenges of translating Lorem Ipsum, a bit of filler Latin/Greek nonsense text that resembles an “extreme Mallarmé, or a Burroushian cut-up, or a paragraph of Finnegans Wake.”
The Novel vs. The Net
Sven Birkerts, still working through arguments begun in The Gutenberg Elegies, suggests in The American Scholar that "the novel and the Internet are opposites." (via)
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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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Take a Look
“I remember LeVar shooting at a zoo and an elephant had a cold and kept blowing snot all over him. He never lost his cool. 'OK, let’s try it again.'” OMG guys, Mental Floss has an oral history of Reading Rainbow! And let us also never forget the reminiscences of our founder C. Max Magee's mom upon learning the show would be cancelled.