You’ll never want to turn in a library book late again after seeing the spoof video of The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” featuring crime-fighting librarians.
I’m Tellin’ Y’all It’s Sabotage
Race In The Hunger Games
Anna Holmes takes a good look at Hunger Games Tweets, the Tumblr dedicated to rounding up the astonishing number of racist and culturally careless fans of Suzanne Collins’ books. Later on, she mentions a University of Wisconsin study which found that “only 9% of the 3,400 children’s books published [in 2010] contained significant cultural or ethnic diversity.”
Early Bafflings
Yet another open archive for your summer reading enjoyment: the Baffler (“the Journal that Blunts the Cutting Edge”), as part of a website redesign, has made available its entire back catalog of commentary and fiction. Might I suggest starting with this now-charmingly-antiquated piece on marketing to the youthful “hipster” generation? (The Paris Review has other suggestions. It’s hard to go wrong.)
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The Man Who Clothed the World
“No one took this further, with more imagination and daring…At a time when American groups would often dress down—affluent suburban kids disguised as Appalachian farmers or Canadian lumberjacks – Bowie quite deliberately dressed up.” David Bowie’s sartorial legacy.
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Red Dawn
Apropos of nothing, here are some books to read when your country is invaded by Russians.
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I Sanction This
Talk about built-in irony: the class of tricky words known as “contronyms” can mean the opposite of what you think they mean.