“You are what you brought from your country? Or you are what you learned here?” The New York Times visits Librería Barco de Papel, one of New York City’s last remaining Spanish-language bookstores. The space also operates as a community and cultural center for the Jackson Heights neighborhood, where roughly half of the 67,000 residents identify as Latino. If you want to feel some more feelings about the state of independent bookstores, check out this old Millions piece about paving paradise and putting up a Chipotle.
Leemos En Español
Mark Baumer Killed on Cross-Country Protest Walk
This week poet Mark Baumer was struck and killed by an SUV while walking barefoot across the country. Baumer, 33, began his cross-country walk to raise awareness about climate change, and was documenting the journey on his blog (as well as Instagram and YouTube). Florida, where he was killed, was recently ranked “the most dangerous place for pedestrians” in the United States.
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Branded
“It is all bricolage for personal identity building,” says Rob Horning of N+1, providing a somewhat bleak image of the “fast fashion” industry and social media, and what can be expected from the future.
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Wood on the Missing Bits of HHhH
James Wood’s New Yorker review of Laurent Binet’s HHhH, makes note of the sections of the book that were cut by editors (and name-checks The Millions). Here they are if you want to read them and learn more about the context behind the cuts.
This is a Curiosity-novel
In “kids these days” news, any book now counts as a “novel.” There are fiction novels and nonfiction novels, recipe novels and poetry novels and picture novels and, less facetiously, a new novel told in letters of recommendation, Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members. And now that you’ve finished my three-sentence nonfiction digital novel, here’s the world’s longest novel, which clocks in at 3 million pages that I confess I have not read.
Walt Whitman: Bottled and Brewed
Bell's Brewery, in Kalamazoo Mich., is set to release a series of seven beers in tribute to Walt Whitman's famous poetry collection Leaves of Grass.
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