“We connect with books in an intellectual way, but the most valuable relationships we have with them are emotional; to say that you merely admire or respect a book is, on some level, to insult it. Feelings are so fundamental to literary life that it can be hard to imagine a way of relating to literature that doesn’t involve loving it. Without all those emotions, what would reading be?” Joshua Rothman on “The History of ‘Loving’ to Read.”
“Loving” to Read
Stay Woken
“Woken is the usual past participle of the verb wake in modern English, but in some historical and contemporary varieties the past tense form woke is also used as a past participle.” The Oxford English Dictionary offers notes on the more than 600 new words, phrases, and senses added to its lexicon this quarter, including hygge, particle zoo, post-truth, and woke. Perhaps the OED can help our own Edan Lepucki, who needs help giving 11 feelings and experiences names.
tl;dr
It’s the last day to vote on panels at SXSW interactive 2013. So if you wanna hear how our editor in chief, C. Max Magee, and our friends Andrew Womack, from The Morning News, and Kevin Nguyen, from The Bygone Bureau, have changed the game with independent long form digital publishing, you better cast your vote today.
An Arrow Pointed to Meaning
Anthony Domestico interviews C. E. Morgan about her second novel, The Sport of Kings, one of the most anticipated books of 2016. As she puts it, “Every aspect of the novel is–or should be—an arrow pointed towards its ultimate meaning, or a multiplicity of possible meanings.”
The Amazing Production of Kavalier & Clay
Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre has adapted all 636 pages of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay for the stage.
Roughing It
Coming this fall: a newly published autobiography that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote before she decided to retool her life story into the Little House on the Prairie books. Originally intended for an adult audience, Pioneer Girl gives a decidedly unsanitized account of Ingalls Wilder’s life, including love triangles, deadbeat fathers and episodes of drunken abuse. In The Telegraph, Rosa Prince compiles a preview of the new book.
Ernest Hemingway in Cuba
“Queries are unacceptable”
Recommended Reading: Willy Blackmore talking to Matthew J.X. Malady about the time he tried to be a literary agent.