In a review of My 1980s & Other Essays, Adam Kirsch reveals that Wayne Koestenbaum once compared a verse from a Robert Lowell poem to Buns of Steel. (Yes, that Buns of Steel.)
No Word on What He Thought of Richard Simmons
Curiosities: As Compiled by a Hologram
So much to hate: The Beast’s 50 Most Loathsome People in America 2008Bookshelves gone wild: Plant your tree of knowledge next to your literary playground.At the Vroman’s Bookstore blog, Patrick talks about why “books need more time,” and looks at how one book is getting more than the one week it was given.n+1 launches N1BR, the book review supplement to n+1. One of the editors is Nikil Saval, who appeared in our Year in Reading series in 2008.The earliest celluloid film (from 1888) can be found – where else – on YouTube. (From The List Universe’s “Top 10 Incredible Early Firsts In Photography“)As if it wasn’t already hard enough to get up for work in the morning: Our world may be a giant hologramJack Shafer responds to David Carr’s call to “invent an iTunes for News.”
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“It’s the people that keep you going back”
Here’s a wonderful way to spend 77 minutes: the NYPL posted the entire video of a conversation between Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and Behind the Beautiful Forevers author Katherine Boo.
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Russian Slapstick
“Russian humor is to ordinary humor what backwoods fundamentalist poisonous snake handling is to a petting zoo. Russian humor is slapstick, only you actually die.” Ian Frazier writes about the strange humor of Daniil Kharms for the New York Review of Books.
Project Yosemite
Sheldon Neill and Colin Delehanty’s Project Yosemite is “an ongoing adventure to timelapse Yosemite in a extreme way.” Their first video is (ahem) extremely beautiful.
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Bibliotherapy for Fiction Lovers
Ceridwen Dovey asks, can reading make you happier?
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The Winds of Winter Excerpt
“Somewhere off in the far distance, a dying man was screaming for his mother.” Entertainment Weekly has the first paragraph of the next installment of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.