Amidst increasing calls to “memorialize slavery’s ties with Glasgow in a more sensitive way,” Scottish poet Kate Tough recently published a tribute poem, “People Made Glasgow.” Tough calls on the city to install a permanent slavery exhibit, a memorial garden, or new street names as well.
Brutalised Africans Made Glasgow
Election Heat Map: Book Edition
Amazon created an "Election Heat Map" to tally the number of "red" and "blue" books sold across the nation, and the count is updated hourly. The results are somewhat surprising to those who believe liberals read more than conservatives. (Perhaps liberals frequent more independent bookstores?) At the time of this writing, "red" books are favored by a margin of 7%.
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And Are We and Are We
Now that Horse_ebooks as we knew it is dead (or alive, depending on your viewpoint), the Internet is convening to pay tribute to the Dadaist masterpiece. At Slate, Will Oremus opines that the feed was “pretty great” even when it was a spambot, while at The Globe and Mail, Navneen Alang argues that it’s “more wonderful today, not less.”
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Here Refrain
Beautiful, shimmer, jetty. Poets Joy Harjo, Claudia Rankine, Robert Pinsky et al. tell Merriam-Webster about their favorite words. Related, and far less pretty: the most-looked-up words post-election include fascism, bigot, and xenophobe.
Everything Is Fine, Part Deux
The second issue of Little Brother Magazine (edited by Millions emerita and Toronto resident Emily Keeler) features excellent fiction about scandal-plagued mayor Rob Ford. At The Atlantic Cities, Mark Byrne talks with Emily, who describes herself as “addicted" to the drama surrounding the mayor.
Get Educated on SOPA
Tomorrow (January 18th), sites like Wikipedia and Reddit will go dark to protest SOPA. Anyone who's been online over the past few weeks probably has a vague sense of why this proposed legislation is bad news for the internet as we know it, but Reddit has put up a blog post delving into the language and illustrating the frankly alarming ramifications of its passage.
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Curiosities: Raw Power
RSVP: We've already had several RSVPs for our NYC indie bookstore walking tour. Get all the details via our announcement post.People are still adding to our collaborative literary Atlas. Recent additions include several non-bookstore literary spots in the Midwest, including the Kate Chopin House and the final resting place of William S. Burroughs. The Atlas itself has been viewed over 100,000 times.Panelists at the SXSW "New Think for Old Media" panel face death by a thousand Tweets.Also via Freebird: Iggy Pop explores Michel Houellebecq's raw power.Mark Grief and Year in Reading contributor Wells Tower give far-ranging interviews in a new online journal, Wag's ReviewHanif Kureishi discusses life after the Rushdie fatwa.A bibliography of coffee.The editor of John Updike's book reviews remembers the writer: "he was attentive to everything."Cathleen Schine admires Zoe Heller's The Believers.The Village Voice praises Mary Gaitskill's "ludicrous mastery."In two long posts, Blographia Literaria offers a thoughtful alternative to our take on The Kindly OnesBen Okri pioneers the Twitter poem.Two books named Brooklyn enter, one book named Brooklyn leaves. (via)Tucker Carlson sounds a dissenting note on Jon Stewart in the wake of the Jim Cramer takedown.Levi Asher and Scott Esposito discuss litblog economics.At The Second Pass, Jon Fasman calls readers' attention to Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, echoing John Wray's Year in Reading contention that "Sometimes, though, a work of originality and genius slips inexplicably through the cracks."Wray's Lowboy, meanwhile, got the James Wood treatment at the New Yorker this week.
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Traveling like Twain
The Mississippi was integral to Mark Twain's fiction, so David Carkeet traced Twain's path on the river in the new issue of Smithsonian. "What would Samuel Clemens have made of the Riverwalk? He was a grown child who readily took a God’s-eye view of life on earth. He would have loved it." Pair with: Our essay on Twain's travel writing.