Book reviews are great and all, but even we sometimes feel they’re missing something. Enter Kevin Thomas, whose HORN! illustrated reviews for The Rumpus are beautiful and informative in under 9 panels. Compare his pieces on Roxane Gay‘s An Untamed State or Leslie Jamison‘s The Empathy Exams to our reviews here and here, and be sure to check out the just-published HORN! The Collected Reviews.
A Review in Comics
Border Borrowing
The Haskell Free Library straddles the U.S.-Canadian border. Enter the library in the United States, and browse through the books in Canada.
What a Gas!
Anatoly Liberman unwinds the etymology of “fart,” a word that, despite seeming modern, was used in the original legend of Thor and has been with us since the birth of the Indo-European ur-language.
Tuesday New Release Day
Newly on shelves today are much anticipated books by Adam Haslett (Union Atlantic) and Richard Bausch (Something is Out There).
The Problem with String Theory
Don’t tell Paul Murray, but apparently “string theory,” much beloved by artists and fringe physicists alike, has zero proof to back it up.
The Humanities Ph.D.: Less Than Useless
Despair, debt, frustration, a decade in school rewarded with guaranteed joblessness. If this cocktail of woe sounds good to you, consider getting a Ph.D. in English, History, or any other humanities discipline. At the New York Times, yet another of the recent spate of articles explaining how utterly dismal the prospects of recent humanities Ph.D.s are.
Fictitious Abstractions
Recommended Reading: On educating teenagers’ emotions through literature.