Year in Reading contributor Kevin Smokler’s new essay collection, Practical Classics, explores the benefits of revisiting the first books you read (even if you hated them). In fact, the difficult and excruciating books have a particular value. “Books aren’t all supposed to be our best friends,” says Smokler in a new Rumpus interview. “Sometimes they’re supposed to be that difficult friend who encourages us to do things that we don’t feel are rational or grown-up.”
Practical Classics (Even When You Hate Them)
Tres Fridas para el miércoles
Here’s some rare footage of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera hanging out with Leon Trotsky and Natalia Sedova in 1938. Here’s an awesome quote from Kahlo: “I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.” And finally, here’s a picture of Frida that’s even more awesome than both of those things.
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Innovations in Multi-Tasking
The “Laptop Steering Wheel Desk” seems like a really bad idea. Then again, better that anyone inclined to use a computer while driving have a desk to put it on.
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Submission Alert!
Heads up, writerly types! Dzanc Books is looking for submissions for their newly-announced 2016 Prize for Fiction. Judges Carmiel Banasky, Kim Church, and Andrew F. Sullivan will determine the winner, who is slated to receive publication and a not-so-insignificant $10,000 prize. Go get published.
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