Curious what the Obamas will be reading over Christmas? The Scrutinizer in Chief stopped by Upshur Books in Washington, D.C. on Small Business Saturday to selected a nice little haul for the winter break with titles ranging from Jonathan Franzen’s Purity to Rachel Renée Russell’s Dork Diaries 1: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life.
ROTUS
“Like church bells rung by wild sugar high children”
"Perhaps it’s a sign that our literary culture is not quite so ailing that Smith managed to make a space for NW, to clear a third path, one that meanders through Willesden, through time, and through the mind." Our own Emily M. Keeler on realism and Zadie Smith.
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Kindle Highlights and Lowlights
Amazon is now aggregating the data from the "highlighting" feature on the Kindle to find out what text is highlighted the most across all Kindle users. Amazon is calling the feature "Most Highlighted Passages of All Time" and the results couldn't be more boring. (via)
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What’s The Rush?
Benjamin Percy makes the case for slowing down, "the best thing [he] ever did for my reading, which might be the best thing [he] ever did for [his] writing."
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The Purpose of Punctuation
Recommended Reading: Artist Nicholas Rougeux removes all the letters in a text and meditates on the punctuation that is left on the page.
“Books are an existential crisis”
Kyle Winkler, in an editorial for Vouched Books (which I've mentioned previously), writes that "books are an existential crisis" because we can't possibly read them all.
A Religious Review
"POPE OF PURGATORY WOULD BE A SOLID BAND NAME." Part two of a series in which Mallory Ortberg of The Toast reviews Martin Luther's The Ninety-Five Theses.
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