Recommended Reading: On whether or not “grit” is the true key to workplace (and lifetime) success. Angela Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, says yes.
To Grit or Not To Grit?
The Naked Truth About Favorite Poems
Reddit users asked one another to name their all-time favorite poems. Not to be outdone, Poetry Brain asked its Twitter followers to name their all-time favorite poems… to read naked. Since I imagine the latter group is usually only able to read in the buff while at home, I bet they really lament the 2001 demise of Harvard’s “Phone-a-Poem” feature.
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Teju’s Twitter
Yesterday, our own Elizabeth Minkel pondered if Twitter fiction could be real art. She cited Teju Cole, a literary Twitter master, but what does he have to say about how Twitter affects his writing? "My memory is worse than it was a few years ago, but I hope that my ability to write a good sentence has improved," he told The New York Times.
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Thursday Links
Alas, the Tournament of Books is over for my bracket as it was revealed that the "Zombie Round" brought Against the Day and Absurdistan back into the competition. With my finalists now officially out of the competition my bracket is dead, and it looks like I'll finish in the middle of the pack. Meanwhile, fresh off the Oprah selection shocker (more on that in my next post), I'm think The Road is a lock to win this thing.Book Chronicle has organized an award for litblogs. In my post about book blogs being snubbed by the major blog awards, I argued that book blogs didn't need to recognized in this way to legitimize them. Still, I do appreciate Book Chronicle nominating The Millions for their award.Harry Potter obsessives can now have a look at the cover for the final book in the series.The Paris Review has given its $10,000 Plimpton Prize for Fiction to Benjamin Percy, for his story "Refresh, Refresh," which is excerpted on magazine's Web site.Tom Bissell reviews Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at Wet Asphalt.
“You’re a fiction writing professor.”
“You have a hard time imagining how the things you've experienced or discovered, which seem abjectly personal, could be of use to another writer. You're aware that you can follow every single rule in the book, and still write a crappy story.” The Preservationist author Justin Kramon grapples with the idea of teaching writing to college students.
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“What’s old doesn’t need to be old-fashioned.”
One of the last places I ever expected to find John Jeremiah Sullivan’s writing is on Medium, but then again, some the last subjects I ever expected John Jeremiah Sullivan to write about are jam, jars, and pickles.
Judy Blume on Tumblr
Judy Blume answered questions about life, writing, and her new book, In the Unlikely Event, on Alfred A. Knopf’s Tumblr on Wednesday. In case you haven’t checked it out, The Millions has a Tumblr, too.
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