The Onion continues its blockbuster literary coverage with a look into the mind of an ordinary English professor. Her epiphany? No matter what she says, her students will believe her.
Jane Austen Was Born in a Log Cabin
Loyal Opposition
Widely linked to already, but worth reading: James Wood on A.S. Byatt‘s The Children’s Book in the LRB. A mixed review that nonetheless makes me want to read the book is, for me, one mark of a good critic.
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Cuba’s Newest Voices
Recommended Reading: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo collected sixteen short stories from sixteen authors among Cuba’s “Generación Año Cero” (Generation Year Zero), which is a “movement of writers who began publishing in 2000.” The anthology, which is available for free online in both English and Spanish, features illustrations from Cuban artists El Sexto and Luis Trápaga.
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Good/Bad Franzen
Get to know the ins and outs of bookstore reading etiquette with this helpful guide (featuring none other than Jonathan Franzen) illustrated by Kate Gavino. Gavino, whose book Last Night’s Reading: Illustrated Encounters with Extraordinary Authors is out now, got her start with a wildly successful Tumblr account.
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Publishing the Torture Report
Independent publisher Melville House worked straight through December to publish the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture in time for the New Year. Now co-founder Dennis Johnson talks with Vulture about why his press decided to publish the book at all, and about the varied moral and practical concerns at stake when working on such a project.
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Origin Story
Over at JSTOR Daily, Tara Isabella Burton writes on historical interpretations of the Book of Genesis and literal readings of a text that had been interpreted as allegory for centuries.
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How Do You Like Your Copy?
Lit Hub has brought Benjamin Dryer and Mary Norris together to discuss their love of editing, copy mistakes writers often make, and more.
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Digital Books for Kids
A literature-loving dad tries to make sense of the new frontier: Digital books for kids.
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The Diaries of Roland Barthes
At the Book Bench, slides of Roland Barthes’ diaries from 1977 in their original, hand-written form: “His brilliance, which indelibly influenced literary theory, semiotics, social theory, and post-structuralism, can make him seem as distant as he is renowned. Yet the diary entries… reveal Barthes to be extraordinarily sensitive and relatable.” (via The Rumpus)