Did you join Emma Watson’s feminist book club? Katy Waldman did, and she has some thoughts on the Shared Shelf. We have our own feminist hate-read book club with Nicole Cliffe, Michelle Dean, Roxane Gay, and more.
Sharing the Shelf
More on Sam Anderson’s Marginalia
In his inaugural column for The New York Times Magazine, former New York Magazine critic Sam Anderson expands upon the idea he shared with us in his “Year in Marginalia,” his riff on our big Year in Reading series. And, as a sidebar to Anderson’s column, the Magazine has published a brief excerpt of John Brandon’s compelling essay from The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books (perhaps you’ve heard that title mentioned around here lately?)
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Ferlinghetti’s Journals Forthcoming
95-year-old Lawrence Ferlinghetti plans to publish his travel journals in September 2015, reports SFGate. The journals should cover his experience as a submarine chaser in World War II through his doctoral studies at the Sorbonne, as well as his travels through Central and South America later on.
Book Discoverability
Millions staff writer Patrick Brown put together a case study (featuring graphs!) on how books get “discovered.” Spoiler alert: there’s no “magic bullet.”
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Charles Darwin’s Interest in “Neuropsychiatric Photography”
In the late 1860s, James Crichton-Browne, director of the West Riding Lunatic Asylum, gave Charles Darwin a collection of photographic portraits depicting the “afflicted and insane.” What followed was a six-year relationship in which both men corresponded about “the physical manifestations of natural selection.”
How Many Palins Does It Take To Break Even?
Will HarperCollins sell 400,000 copies of Going Rogue? (My guess: you betcha.)
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More Homework
A while back, I wrote about Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher, which may be the first novel in history written entirely in the form of recommendation letters. Now, at The Rumpus, Anjali Enteti sits down with Schumacher, who talks about writing by hand, the adjunct crisis, and why it’s okay that so many people are getting MFAs. You could also read our own Nick Ripatrazone on why MFA grads should teach high school.
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There Goes Ten Minutes of Your Weekend
The visual wizards of Pop Chart Lab have put together yet another mind-bogglingly thorough visual taxonomy. This time, instead of cocktails or monsters, the graphic artists have turned their attention toward “The Magnificent Map of Rap Names.”
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