At The Rumpus, Kate Angus argues that salt, far from being simply a pillar of the spice trade, is in fact “the physical manifestation of the basic triad of our lives: love, work, and grief.”
The Sorrows of Lot
The Millions on Google+
We recently set up a presence on Google+, and we think you should hop on over to join us.
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Islands: Remote and Suspicious
If you dug Judith Schalansky‘s Atlas of Remote Islands (a Millions Hall-of-Famer), you should check out cartographer Victoria Johnson‘s list of “suspicious-sounding islands.”
The Sot-Weed Movie
Steven Soderbergh is interested in bringing The Sot-Weed Factor – John Barth’s “750-plus-page satire of picaresque novels” – to the big, silver or computer screen. You should start getting excited about this if you’re from Maryland, interested in literature, or tickled by the word “beshit.”
So Many Pompadours
In the game of girlhood classics written during the nineteenth century, the correct answer to Little Women versus Anne of Green Gables is clearly Betsy-Tacy.
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“Ephphatha!”
Recommended Reading: “Saliva” by Álvaro Enrigue, whose English-language debut Hypothermia was published this month by the folks at Dalkey Archive Press.
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Not All Dads Are Good Dads
Andrew Thurman writes about a literary genre he's particularly invested in: the Bad Dad Memoir, typically written by the offspring of said Bad Dads.
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A Year in Reading from The New Yorker
New Yorker contributors – including a couple of participants in our “Year in Reading” series – offer a predictably thoughtful and heterodox guide to the best books they read this year.