“One of the things I like about my job is that it draws on the entire person: not just your knowledge of grammar and punctuation and usage and foreign languages and literature but also your experience of travel, gardening, shipping, singing, plumbing, Catholicism, Midwesternism, mozzarella, the A train, New Jersey. And in turn it feeds you more experience. The popular image of the copy editor is of someone who favors rigid consistency. I don’t usually think of myself that way. But, when pressed, I do find I have strong views about commas.” Mary Norris‘s “Confessions of a Comma Queen,” from the New Yorker.
Comma Confessional
Spying with Mountain Chicken Mother of the Buddha
Recommended Reading: Anya Groner’s short story “Suspecting the Smiths” at The Oxford American. “From the ages of nine to eleven, I worked as a spy… I discussed my cases with my partner, who went by code name Mountain Chicken Mother of the Buddha.”
Susan Orlean’s Obsessions
The Rumpus interviews Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief & most recently Rin Tin Tin) about her obsession with other people’s obsessions.
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Lessons for the Publishing Industry?
Eric Harvey presents The Social History of the MP3 at Pitchfork: “So omnipresent have these discussions become, in fact, that it’s possible the past 10 years could become the first decade of pop music to be remembered by history for its musical technology rather than the actual music itself.”
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“How enterprising of you”
A couple weeks ago, I recommended that budding Randians read this self-edifying excerpt, taken from Ayn Rand’s version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Now, Rand has penned her own version of You’ve Got Mail, again kindly published by Mallory Ortberg.
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Share Your Ebooks
Amazon now lets you “lend” your ebooks to other readers for a period of 14 days. And, in an interesting touch that adds a physical limitation to a digital product, you can’t read a book you’ve lent to someone while they’re borrowing it.
Kino
Haruki Murakami, our favorite advice columnist, has a new piece of short fiction in the New Yorker.
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