When it comes to the pleasures of reading out loud, Michael Robbins isn’t so much interested in “why we find certain sounds in certain combinations pleasing or disturbing,” but he does enjoy “the hows.”
You Should Have This Title Read to You
Book(case) Criticism
Dispirited by the deluge of advance review copies and publishing mailers (a plight to which I can relate), Ron Charles decided to forego traditional book criticism for the time being and instead to focus on reviewing something more immediately practical: a bookcase.
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“Pixel Dust”
"In the end, no special effects, dazzling displays, augmented realities, or multimodal cross-platform designs substitute for content. Scholarship, good scholarship, the work of a lifetime commitment to working in a field — mapping its references, arguments, scholars, sources, and terrain of discourse — has no substitute." Johanna Drucker writes about both the importance and the inherent difficulty of scholarly publishing for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Brad Listi Finally Gets Interviewed
The NY Daily News sat Other People Podcast's Brad Listi down for an interview, and thus answers the question of “who interviews the interviewers.”
“Dear Son.”
Recommended Viewing: “The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter,” which is a Scott Wenner film based on a poem by Mark Strand.
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A GIF Search Engine
Last weekend marked the debut of Giphy, a new search engine for animated GIFs. Of course, I’m not willing to give a verdict on its utility just yet – the database doesn’t seem to list my three favorite GIFs of all time: therapist lion, slow motion corgis, and Kermit meets Christian.
Oh, Edward!
Oh, those poor little Twilight-addled tweens--as if they weren't already goggly-eyed with quasi-chaste adoration of Edward Cullen, hero of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books. How they will melt when they see this utterly shameless New Moon poster that portrays a melancholic Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) in a state of tasteful-ish dishabille.
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Old Favorites
Looking for more thoughts on My Life in Middlemarch to supplement today's interview? At Salon, Laura Miller reviews Rebecca Mead’s book, which she calls a "moving demonstration" of Middlemarch's power. (You could also read Adelle Waldman's Year in Reading piece about the novel.)
Get Excited For The Belmont!
I’ll Have Another scratched from the Belmont yesterday, which dashed our hopes of seeing the first Triple Crown winner since 1978, but you can still get excited for today’s race by checking out this beautiful passage from John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Blood-Horses.