“Every journal is a confessional. If it’s in the first person, it cannot help but be. Unless the author of it lies to himself—and that makes it even more of a confessional. For some reason, travel brings out confessions one would never make at home. I am trying to draw the rake of my journal over the landscape. Perhaps I will uncover something.” Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s new collection of travel journals, Writing Across the Landscape, is out now. Travel on back to The Millions for Kate McCahill’s essay on traveling with books.
Salton Sea as Holy Land
The Materialist
Object narrative (n): a story told through meditations on various physical objects. Examples include Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes; Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects; and Paula Byrne's The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things.
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For Tom Waits, Drink Everything
Do you like listening to music, but often struggle with an appropriate drink order? Enter Drinkify, a website which suggests cocktails based on the tunes you’re playing. (I tested it out with The Wu-Tang Clan. It told me to drink “1 bottle of gin.” Do with this information what you must.)
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The World Begat by the King James
As the King James Bible turns 400 this year, it is perhaps more revered than read. That’s a shame, argue three new books, which contend that its cultural influence and literary merit are unsurpassed in the English language.
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Something To Think About This Sunday
Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo author Mark Bowden explains the "hardest job in football" in this Atlantic article from 2009.
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Weekend Links
When I was a kid, I read the whole Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder and never thought about it being "for girls." At Slate, Emily Bazelon writes about why it's wrong that "the conventional educational wisdom holds that boys don't like to read about girls."The New York Public Library's 25 Books to Remember from 2005 (via Conversational Reading)It's Perfectly Normal, a sex education book by Robie H. Harris tops the American Library Association's list of 10 Most Challenged Books of 2005. Also on the list: The Catcher in the Rye and the Captain Underpants series.The Ten Worst Autobiographies as listed by The Independent. Not sure where else you'd find Hillary Clinton, James Frey and Hitler on the same list. (via Books Inq.)A New Orleans resident auctions off a bunch of "first-edition books, handwritten manuscripts and letters by Beat Generation writers" to raise money for Jon and Gypsy Lou Webb who published some of Charles Bukowski's earlest works and were left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.
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