And then there was you: the Oxford English Dictionary is soliciting public help in tracking down “a mysterious, possibly pornographic, 19th-century book from which a number of its quotations are derived.”
Whodunnit
Dispatch from North Korea
Recommended Reading: A short story collection by an anonymous North Korean author was smuggled out of the country and will be published in English next year.
The Water: Stay Out of It
Shark Week 2013 isn’t for another ten months, but you can satisfy your hunger for tales of nautical catastrophe and man-eating fish with these two databases: WreckSite, a collection of shipwrecks classified by worldwide positions, and The International Shark Attack File, a compilation of “all known shark attacks.”
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Just let it be weird.
Mark Mann on going to the gallery and looking at art: "The fact is, nobody knows what art is or why people make it. This is blatantly disturbing."
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No You’re Crying
A lost letter from a dying mother to her young daughter was found in a used bookstore in Bishop Auckland, England, and has been returned to its rightful owner after 15 years. Related: on donating books to unexpected readers.
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“Ephphatha!”
Recommended Reading: “Saliva” by Álvaro Enrigue, whose English-language debut Hypothermia was published this month by the folks at Dalkey Archive Press.
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Finding the Fairy Tale Capital
Where is the fairy tale capital of the world? Atlas Obscura investigates. We write about the problem with fairy tales.