After wasting three hours on Facebook looking at memes, you might be tempted to cut yourself off from the Internet. Unfortunately, as Paul Miller learned after spending a year offline, the world off the grid isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be.
Cut Off
Curiosities: SF Tour
History’s 10 best prison breaks.A Paid Content column argues that the true genius of the Kindle is that it breaks the trend toward multi-tasking……But there is still a huge amount of confusion surrounding the Kindle’s DRM policies.AbeBooks aggregates some summer reading lists.VQR compiles a brief reading list for those following the post-election protests in Iran.Bay Area readers: Conversational Reading is taking a page from The Millions playbook and hosting a San Francisco indie bookstore walking tour. Sounds fun!
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I Leave You My Daffodils
What was it like to grow up with Wordsworth or Coleridge as your dad? Hint: it was weird. (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)
A Proper Analysis
“All this is by way of saying that in the United States we haven’t got any actual royals, and yet almost the very first stories we hear are about princes and princesses, kings and queens. When a little American kid first learns that there is such a thing as real, live princes and princesses, who live in actual palaces, this is liable to come as a terrific shock, though in general a pleasing one. One would like it to be true; it’s a very nice idea, that there is such a thing as an incorruptible person for whom everything will — everything must — come right in the end.” Maria Bustillos on America’s fascination with royalty.
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HomeWORK More Like HomeFUN
“Heidi Maier, the new superintendent of the 42,000-student Marion County public school district in Florida, said in an interview that she made the decision based on solid research about what works best in improving academic achievement in students.” In place of traditional homework, 20,000 elementary school students will spend 20 minutes reading a book of their choice each night, reports The Washington Post. Pair with T.K. Dalton on books, kids, and gender.