The new poet laureate of Canada wants to clue his readers in to the prevalence of poetry in their everyday lives. “People often don’t realize they’re surrounded by poetry,” he said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “At the very least, it’s in the songs they listen to.”
A National Mission
The Odyssey, Mapped
An interactive map created by Gisèle Mounzer tracks the winding, often circuitous journey taken by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.
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Next Up: Volcanic Vodka
What’s cooler: bourbon aged at sea, or beer made from barley launched into space?
Little Emotions in the Person
Recommended Reading: On Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie and the art of hiding one’s feelings — whether helpful or detrimental.
Yellow Is the New Black
Yellow book covers are on the rise as publishers push for bold designs that pop for online shoppers. Also check out this comparison of U.S. and U.K. book covers.
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Two Dollar Radio Gets Some Press
Over at Litreactor, Joshua Chaplinsky checks in with Two Dollar Radio, the publishing outfit responsible for Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps, which was one of my Year In Reading selections last year.
One Child Fiction
In 2013, Mo Yan became China’s first resident Nobel Laureate in Literature, which prompted a huge swell of interest in his books in the West. In the Times, Janet Maslin reviews Frog, his latest novel to get an English translation. Sample quote: “Mo Yan, whose real name is Guan Moye, says everything he needs to about the Cultural Revolution with a scene in which Tadpole and other schoolboys eat coal and claim to find it delicious.” You could also read Alan Levinovitz on modern Chinese literature.
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Who Taught It Best
“He is a man who has written a lot about politics and knows something about expectation-setting — set the bar low, and it’ll be easy to top it.” The Awl rounds up its review series of online Masterclasses with such esteemed personages as Aaron Sorkin, James Patterson, and Werner Herzog. See also: our own Sonya Chung‘s review of Sorkin’s film The Social Network.
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