Whether it’s the new compound word “babymommas,” the Mortal Kombat reference, or the phrase “skeedaddle face smash,” I feel compelled to recommend to you this story in PANK, which takes the form of several letters addressed to Maury Povich.
You Are Not the Reader
Google Books’s Impasse
"When it started almost 15 years ago, [Google Books] ... seemed impossibly ambitious," writes Scott Rosenberg. "An upstart tech company that had just tamed and organized the vast informational jungle of the web would now extend the reach of its search box into the offline world." But these days, Google's moonshot has turned into a "mundane reality." How?
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#LitBeat: The Common Launch
In the latest installment of #LitBeat our intrepid reporter Tiffany Gibert finds herself celebrating The Common and transfixed by The Dog House Band.
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Finnegans Punk
Forget One Direction. Meet the little known boy band made up of John Cage, James Joyce, and Joey Ramone. Cage composed a song based on Joyce's Finnegans Wake called "The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs," which Ramone later sang to haunting effect.
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Chasers
Last week, Year in Reading alum Megan Mayhew Bergman released Almost Famous Women, a new collection of stories. Now, at Bookslut, Rebecca Silber talks with her about the book, which spans nearly a decade of meticulous reading and research. Sample quote: “We need to see women who chase wild dreams and professions as ardently as men.”
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Where ‘1984’ Began
"[E]ven though he was already sick with the illness that would eventually become the tuberculosis that killed him, Orwell left London to live on the Scottish island of Jura (off and on) for the next few years, where he could try to focus on writing fiction instead of journalism." Nathan Gelgud creates a wonderful illustrated origin story of 1984 for Signature Reads. Pair with this piece on the fall (literally) of the ur-Orwellian home.
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“More allegorical than real”
Recommended Reading: Deborah Friedell on Ian McEwan’s The Children Act.
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