If you haven’t taken The New York Times’s regional dialect quiz, try The New Yorker’s satirical version instead. “What do you call a grassy area with gravestones and bodies in it? Goth cotillion.”
How Youse, Yix Talk
“Flip him the flame”
Recommended Reading: “La Cahachina (or Pig Roast Box)” by David Tybor (Brian Engler trans.).
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Pynchon Angst
Sam Anderson hates Thomas Pynchon.
Tuesday New Release Day: Patchett, Stein, Brandon
The big literary new release this week is Ann Patchett's State of Wonder. Also recently out is Gertrude Stein's long-lost oddity for children, To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays. New in paperback is John Brandon's Citrus County.
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Writing Sarcastically
Sarcasm makes the Internet go round. No, seriously, it basically does, and over at The Toast a linguist examines some of the strategies writers have developed, or are trying to develop, to communicate that sarcasm through writing, without the benefit of an eye-roll and a different tone of voice.
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New Richard Powers Story Available As an eBook
National Book Award-Winning author of The Echo Maker Richard Powers has a new story out, "Genie", as an ebook original.
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The Book Depository Map
For book voyeurs, the Book Depository has a live, real-time map of people actually buying books from them across the world. (via Guardian's Book Blog)
Dubus on Love and Class
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Of Transatlantic Manoeuvres and Colourful Sweaters
Our favourite American editor of an across-the-pond publication - Emily Bobrow of More Intelligent Life - chats with The Morning News about Anglo-American stylistic differences: "The English work hard but pretend not to, while Americans often strain to look busy."