Happy 750th!
East of Here
Recommended Reading: This interview with the director of the National Steinbeck Center.
●
●
In Defense of Distraction
“Utter devotion to the principle that distraction is Satan and writing is paramount can be just as poisonous as an excess of diversion,” writes Benjamin Nugent.
Duck and Cover
“In my mind, the encircled bird on the cover of the 1978 Pocket Books edition of Play It As It Lays immediately recalled another: the mockingjay pin given to Katniss Everdeen at the start of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games.” At Paper Monument: the importance of book covers.
●
●
Culture Shock
“When it comes to living in a democracy, Nato Thompson argues, nothing affects us more directly and more powerfully than culture. Culture suffuses the world we live in, from TV to music to advertising to sports. And all these things, Thompson writes in his new book, Culture as Weapon, ‘influence our emotions, our actions, and our very understanding of ourselves as citizens.'”
●
●
Howard Jacobson on Table Tennis
Tablet Magazine publishes Booker prize winner (and one-time ranked junior table tennis player) Howard Jacobson’s essay on flamboyant ping-pong champ Marty Reisman for the first time in the U.S.
Browne’s Guide to Science Writing
Want to write about science? Let Sir Thomas Browne, “17th-century know-it-all,” show you how.