Recommended reading, Halloween edition: 5 scary stories written by women, courtesy of BookRiot.
5 Scary Stories
Pirates Write Books Too
Actor Mackenzie Crook (think tall, gangly pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean) tells Telegraph WordUp! Festival that writing his first children’s book, The Windvale Sprites, was the most nerve-wracking test of his career.
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The 12th Caine Prize
NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing for her story “Hitting Budapest” (pdf).
Short Circuit Reading
Do you ever find yourself skimming novels looking for exciting words and hyperlinks? You aren’t the only one mixing up the digital and print reading worlds. Neuroscientists believe we are developing new brain circuits for skimming online information that are rewiring how we’ve approached reading for centuries. Pair with: Our essay on how writing is also changing to fit our fragmented attention span.
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Just Like, “Gross”
“excited to get over you by being obsessed with somebody who doesn’t want me.” Poetic Twitter accounts are all the rage. Over at The New Yorker, Haley Mlotek takes an in-depth look at one account in particular that is toeing the line between dark humor and debilitating sadness, @SoSadToday.
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Parting Is Blah Blah Blah
Say goodbye to Sadie Stein! Stein, who is moving on after two years as The Paris Review Daily’s correspondent, had this to say: “It is a strange thing to monetize your emotions. Anyone who writes or creates knows this. And the work one does on the Internet feels insubstantial, even by the flimsy standards of intellectual property. Any body of digital work is a funny mixture of ephemeral and immortal, and it’s hard to know how to feel about such an archive.”
Are You Sure?
“Are you sure you need to give me that summer reading list-library flyer-academic camp brochure? Are you sure that I can’t just let my kids get dumber by 1/3rd until they come back here in the fall like we all used to?” Are you sure there isn’t anything I can do? Welcome to every teacher’s nightmare, courtesy of McSweeney’s.
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