“Claiming that feminism killed home cooking is not just shaming, it’s wildly inaccurate from a historical standpoint…As should be obvious to anyone who’s peeked at a cookbook from the late 1940s or early 1950s that promotes ingredients like sliced hot dogs and canned tomato soup, we’ve been eating processed crap since long before feminism. Yet the idea of the feminist abandoning her children to TV dinners while she rushes off to a consciousness-raising group is unshakable.” The perils of foodie nostalgia.
The From Scratch Club
Emazing
Fans of the French Oulipo movement will know about A Void, the Georges Perec novel written entirely without the use of the letter “e.” What very few readers of any kind know, however, is that in 1939, thirty years before Perec’s novel was published, Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a book in English, Gadsby, that hewed to these same constraints. At The Atlantic, Nikhil Sonnad investigates how this experiment plays out in the book.
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Capital G
"Good TV is not merely good TV (i.e. better-than-average TV), but TV that is so good it deserves to be taken as seriously as great films and even great Literature (yes, with a capital 'L'). As such, watching Good TV and discussing Good TV are qualitatively different than watching and talking about other kinds of TV. The emergence of Good TV is a rather big deal in the recent history of American culture. It may well be one of the top two or three cultural developments of this still-young century." Todd Hasak-Lowy dissects the TV revolution. (Pair with: our own Michael Bourne on the new age of cable and Broadway.) (h/t The Rumpus)
Gary Shteyngart, Viral Video Star
It seems like Gary Shteyngart may be embarking on a new career as a viral video star (remember his wacky book trailer for the hardcover of Super Sad True Love Story?). Here he is with Paul Giamatti in a "buddy comedy" touting the paperback.
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Blazing the Path
Pultizer Prize winner for fiction (and Year in Reading alum), Viet Thanh Nguyen, speaks about writers who “blazed the path” ahead of him at The Washington Post. For all of the Pulitzer Prize finalists, head to our comprehensive list.
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Giving J.K. Rowling a Run for Her Rejections
Before Donal Ryan made the Man Booker Prize Longlist, his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, was rejected 47 times until an intern plucked it out of the slush pile. We bet those 47 publishers are smacking themselves on the forehead right now. Pair with: Research has shown that rejection is like physical pain.
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Extras
Zadie Smith's On Beauty takes home the Orange Prize.Map of the New Yorker caption contest winners. (via emdashes)Abebooks has put together some special pages celebrating its 10th anniversary. Check out Powers of 10 - which includes the list of most expensive books ever sold on the site - and the timeline, which shows what the site looked like at its humble beginnings. (thanks Laurie.)
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