Sick of Delta delays? Take one of Mallory Ortberg’s literary airlines listed in her humor post at The Toast. “Thanks for flying Jane Air. Are you escaping for business or for pleasure? Will you be stowing any wives today?”
A Bumpy Flight
I’d Like to Thank…
“It is not, however, fashionable to love acknowledgments, and for good reason: Most of them are numbingly predictable in their architecture, little Levittowns of gratitude.” In her last piece for The New York Times as a daily book critic, Jennifer Senior writes about her unabashed love for acknowledgements in books. From our archives: Henriette Lazaridis‘s essay on the same topic.
Sometimes It’s Obvious
Why They’re Single is a “tribute site to excellence and failure in online dating.” And what better date for it to go live than on Valentine’s Day? (Related: OK Stupid: The Horrors of OK Cupid.com)
Reread Nation
Why do we reread novels obsessively as children but hardly ever as adults? At The Morning News, Clay Risen discusses why rereading appeals to children so much. “It was a residual sense of wonder, left over long after I had accepted that the reality on the page and the reality beyond it are distinct.” Pair with: Our essay on the pleasures and perils of rereading.
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Writing About Suicide
Recommended reading: Philip Connors, whose memoir All the Wrong Places was included in our 2015 Book Preview, writes for the New Yorker about his brother’s death and the problems with “cathartic” writing.
Unferth on Lerner
The always fantastic Deb Olin Unferth reviews Ben Lerner‘s Leaving the Atocha Station.
Remembering Tomie dePaola
Naomi Fry reflects on celebrated children's writer and illustrator Tomie dePaola, the author of more than 270 works for children.
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In the Kitchen with Shirley Jackson
Valerie Stivers takes on the poisoned meal from We Have Always Lived in the Castle—minus the arsenic-sprinkled blueberries, of course.
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Clarissa Explains It All
Recommended Reading: This piece by Adelle Waldman at The New Yorker on loving and loathing Samuel Richardson, “the man who made the modern novel.”