Agatha Christie could actually kill you. She studied pharmacology and learned how to create poisons, which led to her use of poisons in her novels. You could also read Daniel Friedman’s essay on solving the mystery of how to close a crime novel.
Poison in the Plot
Drink It Up
Depending on your persuasion, this blog post listing six songs about whiskey is either a funny article or a kind of public service.
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Brackets Busted
How’s your bracket doing? Upsets abound not only on the hardwood but also in The Morning News’s Tournament of Books. Celebrate your victory over lesser bracketologists (or, alternately, mourn your defeat against the onslaught of superior bracketologists) with this compendium of basketball poetry compiled by the folks at the Poetry Foundation.
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Two Newly-Discovered Sappho Poems
A researcher unearthed two never-before-seen poems by Sappho. To fans of Classics and Greek poetry, this is bigger than the surprise release of Beyoncé’s secret album.
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Reflecting on Time During Quaratine Reading
Parul Sehgal examines time through the writing being produced during the pandemic, as well as the books she reads (and re-reads).
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The Platonic Library
The Guardian has an excerpt of My Ideal Bookshelf, with pieces by Judd Apatow, David Sedaris and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, available for viewing on its website. Take a guess which one said Raymond Carver makes writing fiction look easy.
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Which is Which
“Two writers guard an archive. One writes Fiction; the other writes Fact. To get past them, you have to figure out which is which.” Recommended reading: The New Yoker‘s Jill Lepore attempts to trace the “long-lost story of the longest book ever written,” Joe Gould‘s The Oral History of Our Time.
A Community of Introverts
“What I want to know is, since when does making art require participation in any community, beyond the intense participation that the art itself is undertaking? Since when am I not contributing to the community if all I want to do is make the art itself?” Meghan Tifft gives voice to the struggle of the introverted writer in an essay for The Atlantic.
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