2,131 books and 27 volunteers helped The Seattle Public Library set the record for longest book domino chain earlier this month.
Domino Effect
The Best Episode of Science Friday Ever?
Public radio program Science Friday has quite a lineup on tap this week: “Science and art often seem to develop in separate silos, but many thinkers are inspired by both. Novelist Cormac McCarthy, filmmaker Werner Herzog, and physicist Lawrence Krauss discuss science as inspiration for art and Herzog’s new film on the earliest known cave paintings.” (via @maudnewton)
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Breaking the Binary
Rachel Klein writes on raising a genderqueer, non-binary child. “Being a parent means, at some point, being able to look on as your child writes their own story, a story in which you play a role but which is ultimately not about you.”
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A Critical Take on Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer may not have exactly “self-plagiarized” his own work, but he certainly did recycle a good amount of his writing in a misleading way. And while many have criticized this kind of lazy writing, it’s worth revisiting Tim Requarth and Meehan Crist’s critical review of Lehrer’s book, Imagine, which plays a central role in this entire scandal.
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Hermione Hoby Untangles a Web of Perceptions
Hermione Hoby discusses her new novel, Virtue, and why she chooses to focus on characters rather than themes in her writing process.
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Pop-Hop Books & Curio
Coming in 2012: Pop-Hop Books & Curio. Located in the Highland Park neighborhood on the east side of Los Angeles, Pop-Hop will be “a creative retail environment merging a bookstore and project space.” More information, as well as some opportunities to support the project, are available at the shop’s Kickstarter page, and also on its Facebook page.
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The Personal Dilemma of Writing
Tim Parks investigates the idea of “writing to death” in the cases of Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, Anton Chekhov, Charles Dickens and William Faulkner. “So many of the writers I have looked at seem permanently torn between irreconcilable positions,” Parks writes. “Eventually, the dilemma driving the work either leads to death, or is neutralized in a way that prolongs life but dulls the writing” (Bonus: Our own Mark O’Connell just reviewed Parks’s latest book, Italian Ways.)
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