Fancy yourself a trivia buff? This quiz might be your undoing. In The Guardian, you can test your knowledge of prominent bands in fiction, from real-life bands that reference books to bands in famous novels.
Rock On
Your Literary Superpower
Does reading a novel for a few hours make you feel smarter? You’re not alone: a new study suggests that reading novels heightens activity in the left temporal cortex, also known as the part of the brain associated with receptivity to language. The best part? The changes last for five days.
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Black Balloon’s Horatio Nelson Prize
Black Balloon has announced a new Horatio Nelson fiction prize, and the terms are pretty sweet. There’s no entry fee, and one winner will receive $5,000 and a book deal. Details can be found here.
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His Mom Had a Tattoo That Said, “Son”
Forget the Dos Equis guy. John Fairfax was truly "the most interesting man in the world" and, if you don't believe me, read this series of lines from his actual obituary: "At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle. At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar. Afterward he was apprenticed to a pirate."
The Philosopher’s Lunch
"Another example of Chomsky humour: he calls his assistant’s dog, 'Cat.'" Financial Times sits down for a meal with linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky.
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Writers on Reading
How do writers read? Elisa Gabbert asked ten writers, including Teju Cole and Laura Van Den Berg (who wrote about her pet wolf Natasha for The Millions), about their reading habits for The Believer.
Light Us Up
For whatever reason, the Zippo lighter has earned a place as an icon of Americana, a symbol of everything simple and reliable in the country. At the Ploughshares blog, Nancy McCabein pays a visit to the Zippo Museum, punctuating her account with quotes from works of literature that feature the lighter.
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Rise Up
"Our culture has focused so much attention on the most visible members of the Black Panthers that it has been easy to forget it was a nationwide organization -- an entity that needed to attract ordinary people who believed in something and were also willing to work for it." In the Times, Rembert Browne reviews two new books about the Black Power movement.
David Mamet Appliance Center
The “David Mamet Appliance Center” has some predictably abrasive customer service representatives. Here is Peter McCleery for McSweeney’s imagining a hilarious and existentially hopeless exchange between customer and technician. The Millions has even more to satisfy your fictitious-Mamet fix: an imagined symposium with Mamet, Francine Prose, and James Wood among others.