John Williams and John Williams

Say the books in your Encyclopedia Britannica are moldy, unread and obsolete. You know you could burn them or throw them away, but somehow, you can't do either. Why not?

What would happen if you had a clock to countdown the exact number of days until you died? Our own Mark O'Connell discovers the paranoia of having the Days of Life app measure his mortality at The New Yorker. "Days of Life functions like a reductio ad absurdum of the logic of personal productivity. The pie chart becomes a special way of being afraid: an image of the self as a micro-economy of numbered days." For a more uplifting version of O'Connell, check out his 2013 Year in Reading post.

“What happened that night? Your final night?” The New Statesman publishes poet laureate Ted Hughes’ long lost poem "Last Letter," inspired by the suicide of his wife Sylvia Plath. Actor Jonathan Pryce gave a reading of the poem for Channel 4 News.