“Every one of these books is a herd of animals.” The Atlantic reports that a group of archaeologists and geneticists in the UK have used mere crumbs of parchment to study the DNA of several thousand-year-old illuminated manuscripts, the pages of which were made of cow and sheep skins.
A Flock of Pages
Nicholson Baker and Friendly’s
Nicholson Baker talks about why he does so much writing at Friendly’s, a fast food chain that soon may exist only in its descriptions.
●
●
Amazon App Store Action
Ever-expanding Amazon is getting in on the app store action with an app store of its own, launching today (and featuring, what else, Angry Birds). Some analysts believe the move presages a plan for Amazon to launch a more fully featured tablet, modeled on the Kindle, but able to play all the movies, music (and now apps) that Amazon now sells in digital form.
●
●
The Greatest Biscuits in the World
It’s funny and fitting that Madame Proust, in a letter now on display at the Morgan Library, implored her son to share persnickety details about what time he got up in the morning. Another thing the exhibition, which celebrates the hundredth anniversary of Swann’s Way, reveals: early drafts of the book used “biscottes” in place of “madeleine.”
●
●
Goodreads launches “Ask the Author” feature
Goodreads has launched a new Ask the Author feature, allowing readers to ask the likes of Margaret Atwood, Khaled Hosseini, and Jesmyn Ward questions “about the new worlds, ideas, and people they’ve discovered in books.”
●
●
Everything Is Interesting
“Baker is such a wonderful prose stylist that he could probably get away with publishing his diary—which, for epic stretches, is what Substitute feels like.” Over at The Nation, Evan Kindley reviews Nicholson Baker‘s latest, a 700-plus-page non-fiction exploration of substitute teaching. Spoiler: it’s not as sexy as Baker’s other work. If it’s the sex you want, see our primer on Baker’s novels; also immensely entertaining, our interview with the author from 2013.
●
●