Summer Brennan attempts the Marie Kondo approach to organizing her library and learns about the heartbreaking difficulty of getting rid of books. Pair with this Millions essay on private libraries and what books reveal about their readers.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up a Library
The Best New Underground Literary Magazines
From The Independent, the best of the new breed of underground literary magazines to fit into that “empty slot on the bookshelf between your pristine copies of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and Granta.”
Next Step: Skynet Becomes Self-Aware
James Harriman-Smith wants to know what humans can learn from a computer’s reading of Shakespeare’s plays. As it turns out, there’s quite a bit.
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Serializing in the Digital Age
The University of Michigan Press will be serializing two novels on their Facebook account. Previously, authors such as Brandon J. Mendelson have experimented serializing their novels 140 characters at a time. He even has some tips for doing so.
Out There
A half-century ago, Thomas Berger published Little Big Man, a satire of Westerns that helped increase the stature of the Western genre as a whole. To mark the book’s 50th anniversary, Allen Barra reflects on its legacy, suggesting that it’s as good a candidate as any for the title of Great American Novel. Related: Daniel Kalder on the odd phenomenon of the Euro-Western.
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The Trouble with Google Books
Laura Miller at Salon reports on the ongoing problems with Google Books’ plan to “digitally scan every book in the world.”
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Mark Twain Autobiography
Larry Rohter at the New York Times relates the darker, more cynical Mark Twain that has emerged through publication of the first volume of his unexpurgated autobiography, a century after his death: “One thing that gets Mark Twain going is his rage and resentment.”