“If I could paint or compose music, I would want to finally arrive at what I felt was beauty for me and for others. I would trust that if I could make something that was beautiful, it would also be true, the way Charlie Parker is true or a Shostakovich cello concerto is true, and I feel the same way about writing. I try to make something beautiful out of language.” Fogged Clarity interviews Stuart Dybek about the writing process and Ecstatic Cahoots, which we mentioned in our 2014 Book Preview.
Something Beautiful
Cockroaches in Skinny Jeans
Is that an iPod Nano? And a fixed gear bike? Uh-oh: you might have hipsters (via).
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Avoiding Unnecessary Punctuation
Over at The Washington Post, Jeff Guo makes a case against periods. As he puts it, “When we get excited, the pauses between our sentences shrink. We speak in run-ons. […] A period feels too weighty.” Also check out this Millions piece on the benefits of excising quotation marks.
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iWalser, iBradbury
David Wright recommends five works perfectly suitable for smartphone reading.
Amazed and Infuriated
Why do articles go viral? At The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova traces what makes a popular story all the way back to Aristotle, but today’s clickbait has two features: a positive message or an ability to excite the reader emotionally. This probably explains why we love those articles about puppies. Pair with: Our piece on if book titles were written for clicks.
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Library in the Cloud
Amazon has unveiled its Kindle Lending Library. Prime subscribers can now “choose from thousands of books to borrow for free including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers – as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates.”
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Seeing Beyond the Story
“When she began the cancer memoir, it was the fact of the writing, more than what was to be written, that mattered.” On Jenny Diski’s way of seeing beyond the story.
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Talk About a Wonder Emporium
“This Is My Home” is a short profile of a New York City collector of oddities. His home is regularly mistaken for an antique shop, but it really strikes me as the perfect sister-store to Brazenhead Books.