In mid-January, ten days after moving to California, Geoff Dyer suffered a stroke while throwing away trash in his new home. At the hospital, he recovered quickly, but the incident left him “conscious that the ground could open Adairishly beneath my feet at any moment.” In the LRB, he writes about the experience. (Related: Dyer wrote two Year in Reading entries for The Millions.)
“Any given moment”
Portlandia
If you or someone you love has ever mentioned a McSweeney's article to sound cool, you'll feel right at home in this clip from IFC's new show, Portlandia, in which Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein skewer Portland's bookish hipsters.
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The Man Who Clothed the World
"No one took this further, with more imagination and daring...At a time when American groups would often dress down—affluent suburban kids disguised as Appalachian farmers or Canadian lumberjacks - Bowie quite deliberately dressed up." David Bowie's sartorial legacy.
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A Very Special Bunny
"Welcome to the resistance, bunny." Currently sold out on Amazon after topping the book charts for days, The New Yorker writes about John Oliver's charming children's book, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. Pair with: an essay about reconnecting with childhood favorites as a parent.
Dark Thoughts
If you know that Patricia Highsmith wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley, you know that she’s an exceptional authority on the workings of the criminal mind. At The Paris Review Daily, Dan Piepenbring digs up an old interview with the author, in which she describes the act of murder as “the opposite of freedom.” You could also read Tana French on Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train.
The Rooster Bequeathed
In a real nail-biter, the winner of this year's Tournament of Books is...
Little, Brown in the News
U.S. publishing house Little, Brown had a rough day in the news yesterday. Its coy marketing tactics have rubbed some booksellers the wrong way, reports Julie Bosman for The New York Times. Later on, The New York Post's Keith J. Kelly noted that the publisher has dropped one of its bigger titles. Jason Bennett raises some additional questions.