Rosie Schaap espouses the joys of cooking for others “in a powerfully fraught, anxious time” such as ours. “I wanted, at least in this small way,” she writes, “to give comfort—both to myself and to my loved ones.” And as our own Hannah Gersen has noted, if you’re fortunate to have such a good friend for a chef, you can read a cookbook while they work.
The Joy of Cooking for Others
B&N Partnership
Boston-based online retailer Wayfair.com has authored a major deal with Barnes & Noble. Wayfair, which sells 4.5 million products on its own site, is teaming up with Barnes & Noble to showcase some 500,000 toys, kitchenwares and other goods on the book giant’s site.
He’s Not Keen on Kids, Either
Some interesting facts about Geoff Dyer emerge from Bryan Appleyard’s profile of the essayist. Namely: shoes are banned in the Dyer abode; the man enjoys playing tennis; and he’s never had a threesome.
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Documenting Death
“Maurice Sendak drew his partner Eugene after he died, as he had drawn his family members when they were dying. The moment is one he was compelled to capture, pin down, understand, see. Where many— maybe most—people look away, he wanted to render. He was very wrapped up in the goodbye, the flight, the loss; it was almost Victorian, to be so deeply entranced with the moment of death, the instinct to preserve or document it. It’s also the artist’s impulse: to turn something terrible into art, to take something you are terrified of and heartbroken by and make it into something else. For the time it takes to draw what is in front of you, you are not helpless or a bystander or bereft: You are doing your job.” On Maurice Sendak and the art of death.
Illustrated Joyce
Stony Road Press has teamed up with the James Joyce Centre to release a limited edition handmade book, “reproducing the original 1914 text” of “The Dead,” and featuring really interesting hand printed illustrations by Robert Berry. Check out some examples here, here, and here.
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Writerly Pets
Famous authors and their dogs, photographed by Jill Krementz. Via The Daily Dish.
The Etiquette of Books
“Books: As with food and clothing, they’re a commodity that elicits status anxiety for many people, particularly the insecure. And wherever there is status anxiety, there are potential minefields. We need to tread with the lightness of meringue.” Henry Alford explains the etiquette of books for The New York Times.
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The United States of Poetry
Poetry readership among U.S. adults is the highest it’s been in 15 years—with young adult readership (among 18-24 year olds) nearly doubling—according to the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). (For what it’s worth: The Millions has always loved poetry).