One Siberian city is offering free subway rides to passengers who can recite “at least two verses from any poem by Alexander Pushkin.” The obvious corollary would be NJ Transit providing free service to passengers capable of singing “Born to Run” in its entirety.
Poets Ride Free
Thanks Sounds Good
“I love you, in its formal semantic meaning, is at once fetishized and sacrosanct; our familiarity with it as a speech-act is equally uneasy. Type ‘using I love you’ into Google and the first autocomplete result is ‘too much’; the second is ‘as a weapon.’” Google’s recently unveiled Smart Reply feature is saying “I love you” too much. Or is it just the right amount?
●
●
Dark Imaginings
Heading to London in the near future? Stop by the British Library’s new Terror and Wonder, which bills itself as the UK’s biggest Gothic exhibition in history. To whet your appetite, you can read this Guardian piece by Neil Gaiman, in which the Sandman author names Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein the apex of Gothic fiction. Related: our own Hannah Gersen on Frankenstein and the “Year Without a Summer.”
●
●
Lewis Carroll on Writers’ Block
Experiencing writers’ block? Lewis Carroll has a few tips to help you out. We revisited Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass following Tim Burton’s film release.
The Real Cuba
Year in Reading alumna Patricia Engel writes about the “real” Cuba she encountered in her research trips. Pair with Bill Morris’s Millions essay on Havana’s love for cars.
●
●
●
●
Interview with Günter Grass
●
●
At What Age?
This week in book-related infographics: a look at “What Age Do Writers Publish Their Most Famous Works?” from Electric Literature.
●
●