For everyone who believes that “being out and reading is better than staying home and planning to read,” The New Yorker‘s Andrea Denhoed may have found just the thing: silent reading parties.
Silence, Please
Ryan Gosling San Serif
Font geeks will get a kick out of this witty Tumblr site that mashes up glam shots of Ryan Gosling with lessons on the proper, and improper, uses of many typographical fonts and symbols.
The Caged Bird Raps
Maya Angelou is a rapper now. The late writer’s poems have been layered with hip-hop beats for a new album, Caged Bird Songs. The album uses previous recordings of Angelou and a few made last year. “She saw (hip-hop) as this generation’s way of speaking and conveying a message,” her grandson Colin A. Johnson said. Pair with: Our tribute to Angelou.
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Mark Twain’s Autobiography
Mark Twain left instructions not to publish his autobiography until 100 years after his death, which is now. Volume I will hit shelves in November.
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#LitBeat hits LitQuake for a LitQuiz
Our own Lydia Kiesling hit up our own Patrick Brown’s Goodreads LitQuiz to battle for first place in the competitive world of San Franciscan Literary Trivia, and wrote up her trivial trials and tribulations for #LitBeat.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Mansbach, Christensen, Ball, Nom de Plumes
Adam Mansbach’s “viral,” tongue-in-cheek kids’ book for adults, Go the F–k to Sleep is now out. We interviewed Mansbach years ago, pre-frenzy, about other matters. This week also offers up a pair of much anticipated novels for the literary set, The Astral by Kate Christensen (don’t miss Edan’s interview with Christensen today) and The Curfew by Jesse Ball, and a rather specialized tome for fans of literary history, Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms.
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Down Goes the Stout
In what was surely one of the most fun experiments of all time, a team of Irish scientists have finally figured out why Guinness stout bubbles fall instead of rise.