The Perils of Word Aversion
Annals of great profile writing
If you’re looking for some midweek longreads, here are two excellent profile pieces: Emily Nussbaum‘s unabashed enthusiasm for Lena Dunham as HBO’s Girls gears up for release, and Adam Sternbergh on Mark Leyner, whose The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is out today.
“The Ukraine is Weak!”
Ever wonder why some countries get a fancy “the” in front of their names?
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Chang-rae Lee on Writing and Re-writing the Immigrant Novel
Thursday Links
Google has added a Worldcat search to Google Books, allowing readers to look for books in their local libraries as well as on online bookstore sites. (via)From the Department of Clever Book Promotions: Random House is using a text-based (or interactive fiction) game to promote the release of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist.Steven Johnson’s forthcoming book The Ghost Map, “a thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London,” sounds pretty terrific. To whet the appetite, he provides a brief list of the “best” plague books to the Wall Street Journal. (via).Just in time for Banned Books Week, check out some very cool banned books jewelry.
Avian Days
Buying a hawk isn’t the most common grief-coping mechanism, but it worked for Helen Macdonald, who purchased a predatory bird not long after her father passed away. Her new book, H is for Hawk, deals with the experience, in addition to being a falconry manual of sorts. At The Globe and Mail, an interview with the author.
There’s Franco in My McCarthy
Sometime Ph.D candidate, sometime actor, and ubiquitous lit blog all-star James Franco (henceforth known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”) has begun filming an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God in West Virginia, and I’m reminded of that line from W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming” — “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
And here I thought this would be about weird WordPerfect and Open Office fanatics.