Was Virginia Woolf right that the Brontës were too isolated? Or were they just as housebound as their art required them to be? In the latest Atlantic, Judith Shulevitz examines the lives of the family, teasing out evidence that they all used loneliness to their benefit.
Fine By Themselves
Writing on the Wall
"The Chinese people are on high alert that criticism of the government, independent thinking, and challenges to official narratives are dangerous." PEN America has published "Writing on the Wall," a report about the disappearance, late last year, of five Hong Kong booksellers. Only four of the five men have been released from Chinese custody.
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Virtual Typesetting
"Many of the basic rules around typographic contrast and readability for print or 2D screens change in VR. When type becomes even a little bit more volumetric, the way people perceive it and interact with it changes. The type needs to be rooted in something real, otherwise it gets a little uncanny for the user.” What should typography look like in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality interfaces? The Drum considers (via The Digital Reader). Wonder what a book fetishist might thing of all this...
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May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor
Leave the marshmallows at home, and bring your bow and arrow to summer camp instead. In Largo, Florida, the Country Day School created a camp based on The Hunger Games, where campers play intense games of capture the flag. Don't worry, killing your fellow campers isn't allowed.
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Pictures of You
For those of you that complain about there not being any pictures: bring back the illustrated book!
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West of Here
Recommended Listening: Brad Listi in conversation with Stewart O’Nan.
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My Struggle: Special Editions
When all is said and done, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series will consist of six published volumes. In light of the overwhelmingly positive reception for the epic Norwegian books – which have garnered heaps of praise around these parts – Archipelago Books is raising money to produce a special, hardcover edition of each installment.
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PEN World Voices Festival
I spent last weekend as a correspondent for the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. As such, I covered two events for the organization: Friday night’s ninth annual Translation Slam and Sunday afternoon’s Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture featuring Sonia Sotomayor. (I also submitted a pretty sweet author photograph, if I do say so myself.) For full multimedia coverage of the entire festival, check out the PEN Live Tumblr.