For all typography enthusiasts and lovers of browser plugins: Chrome has a new extension, FontFace Ninja, that will tell you the font of any text on any webpage.
What’s That Type?
The Handsell
Ron Hogan has set up a new website in which he recommends books to desiring readers. Check out The Handsell for further information.
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“Paralysis of willpower”
Granta has a new series in which authors explain how they arrived at successful opening sentences. In the latest installment, Colombian author Héctor Abad links the brain chemistry that inspired him to write his chosen sentence with the chemistry that inspired him to fall in love with his wife.
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Uncommon Thrills
In the Times Book Review, Year in Reading alum and Edinburgh author Alexander Chee reviews Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, a Millions contributor. He describes the book as, among other things, a departure from your average literary thriller: “If we know this story, we haven’t seen it yet in American fiction, not until now.”
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One Book to Rule Them All
“We note that there is a great lack of schoolbooks among secondary pupils, due to their weak purchasing power. The books currently in circulation will remain in use, but for purposes of ‘complementary consultation.’” Mozambique’s Education Minister has announced that with the start of the 2017 academic year, its school system will adopt a single book for each subject taught in the country’s secondary schools.
Also: get to know the internationally renowned Mozambican writer Mia Couto, whose books The Blind Fisherman and The Tuner of Silences were recently translated into English.
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I Prefer Not To
Just in time for Labor Day, Electric Literature has a list of 11 lousy jobs from literature that will make you feel better about your own; or you could celebrate the long weekend by writing a novel in three days, like they do in Canada.
Going In
In 2012, the Portuguese writer José Luís Peixoto, on the occasion of Kim Il-Sung’s 100th birthday, went to North Korea for a fifteen-day trip. The experience led him to write a travel memoir, Inside the Secret, which you can read in serialized form online at Ninth Letter magazine. You could also read Pulitzer laureate Adam Johnson’s new Granta essay about the country.
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Cringe-Inducing Books & Growing Up
Two off-site appearances in as many months from our otherwise relatively reclusive editor, C. Max Magee? And both times invoking the theme of lost adolescence? Something’s afoot! Last month, Max dropped by The Morning News‘ booth for the Tournament of Books’ zombie round, and now he’s joining a star-studded cast at The Awl to answer the question, “What Books Make You Cringe To Remember?”
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