There are few better ways to spice up a Monday morning than with a Shakespearean choose-your-own adventure story. If it please thee, proceed to McSweeney’s. Then come back to The Millions and check out these pieces on the Bard.
Told By An Idiot
How Much Does A Writer Make?
How much does a writer make? The Rejecter (“I don't hate you. I just hate your query letter”) breaks it down.
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Someone You’re Not
We're all frauds on the internet! Ann Leary at The Literary Hub takes a look at why online relationships tend to falter in the "real world." Here are a couple of complementary friendship-related essays from The Millions.
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A Slumbering Rooster Begins to Twitch
2010 is soon to be over. That means that The Morning News Tournament of Books is almost upon us. Two excellent developments this year: 1) the folks behind the Rooster have released the longlist of titles under consideration to make the final 16 (including The Singer's Gun by our own Emily St. John Mandel) and 2) they have left one judging spot open that you (you!) can apply to fill.
You Can’t Go Home Again
"When I go back to Bogotá, I like to share my knowledge of the car bombs that went off in the city in the ’80s and ’90s. I helpfully point out the gory details to cab drivers and friends. I press my finger on the window and point at corners, 'That’s the spot where an ATM blew up, seven dead.'” From Bogatá to Tel Aviv -- here are ten writers on the places they immigrated from, returned to, remember, and call home.
Ahh Memories
Book Riot offers a step-by-step guide to making your own book covers out of paper bags. Not saying this was a thing we did as kids, particularly when jacket design didn't meet expectations – a certain Dover edition of the Francis Hodgson Burnett classic A Little Princess comes to mind – but not not saying that either.
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“A hustler wrote this?”
“The book documents its time, a time when homosexuality was illegal, and still described in medical books as a mental illness. It is one of the best firsthand accounts of what it was like to be gay in the mid-20th century — ostracized — separate from the mainstream world. It reveals, through its characters, how young men couldn't admit, even to themselves, that they were what society deemed perverted.” On the novel City of Night by John Rechy.
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