In a Simpsons episode from the late nineties, Lisa Simpson, concerned that her mental skills may be deteriorating, manages to finagle her way onto a local TV news broadcast, where she urges the residents of Springfield to read two books: To Kill a Mockingbird and Harriet the Spy. At first glance, the two novels might not seem to have that much in common, but as Anna Holmes argues in a blog post for The New Yorker, the books share “ideas about the complexity, sophistication, and occasional wickedness of young girls’ imaginations.” (You could also read our own Garth Risk Hallberg on Malcolm Gladwell and To Kill a Mockingbird.)
The Good Kind of Bad
“Neglect everything else.”
“I’ve got to be writing. I have a few ways to make sure I can carve out time. Part one: Neglect everything else. Part two: Get disciplined.” David Mitchell writes about writing and the poetry of James Wright for The Atlantic. Pair with his story in tweets, “The Right Sort,” and Brian Ted Jones‘s Millions review of The Bone Clocks.
The United States of Newspapers
American Short Fiction’s managing editor Jess Stoner is reading local newspapers from one state a week and reporting on the big headlines in a better attempt to understand America. As she puts it, “Not to snark, not to make fun of people from unincorporated towns who write letters to the editor, but to share with you a more complicated, less yell-y look at where we are, with the hopes of better understanding where we might be headed.” The first state is Alabama.
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Straight out of a movie!
Tim O’Connor’s sweet story of falling in love in the cinema.
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Reading Scores Fall
SAT reading scores have fallen to their lowest level on record.
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Appearing Elsewhere
The spiffy new Los Angeles Review of Books website has posted my review of Ben Fountain’s new novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
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