You may have heard that “because” is a preposition now, because Internet. What you may not have heard is that the American Dialect Society named “because” their Word of the Year. Their reasoning? The word’s new meaning allows us to omit full clauses, which makes it useful. (Hilariously, they also named Sharknado the “most unnecessary” new word.)
Because Useful
With One Eye Squinted
“I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.” The New Yorker reports on “Flannery O’Connor‘s Manhattan Memorial” and pitch-perfect quotation.
Yes, Strange
Just when you thought I wouldn’t make you sad about Alan Rickman again, here he is starring in a film adaptation of one of Samuel Beckett’s short plays. In case you missed it last time, these recordings of Rickman reading from Shakespeare, Proust, and Thomas Hardy will surely generate some feelings.
The Book Detective
“When I ask him why he likes something, it’s a perverse exercise less to gain new insight than to trick him into admitting to his personality.” For Longreads, Dead Girls writer Alice Bolin tries to understand her father through the (sometimes misogynistic) mystery novels he reads and loves. (Read our own Janet Potter on Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy.)
Janeites Unite
“‘This is a place where people can let their Jane Austen freak flag fly.'” Last weekend, the Jane Austen Society of North America held their annual meeting in New York, attracting fans from all over the country, including Cornel West and Anna Quindlen.