Fancy a stroll? Flaneur, a new Berlin-based magazine, profiles one street per issue. It explores the culture, literature, people, and landmarks that make each street unique. The first is Berlin’s Kantstrasse. Pair with: Hyperreal Cartography, a tumblr of “real maps of places that exist but don’t.”
Street Smart
Digital and Co.
Pirating versus purchasing used ebooks – who wins? Ayelet Waldman and John Scalzi discuss.
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Why Book Critics Matter
Let us now praise professional book reviewers, like them or not. And speaking of reviews, Niall Ferguson threatens the L.R.B. with legal action over a negative review of his new book, Civilization (via).
The Heat-Packing Poet
Why did Richard Brautigan’s friends eventually stop inviting him to parties? Was it because he got drunk? Was it because he brought too many friends? Or was it because, as Michael LaPointe suggests in his review of Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan, he liked to pack a revolver?
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Tale of a Giraffe
Today in New Zealand: Granta published a Kiwi short story in partnership with Commonwealth Writers.
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Bridget Jones and the Misprint
You’d expect excessive swearing, smoking, and sex in a Bridget Jones novel, but a few copies of Mad About the Boy have accidentally included 40 pages of English actor’s David Jason’s memoir, My Life. Publisher Penguin Random House has admitted to the hilariously postmodern mistake. To find out what’s really in the book, read an excerpt at NPR.
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