It’s that time again. Out come the bathing suits, floppy hats, and…beach-focused marketing campaigns? For Vulture, Allison Duncan dissects the category of the “beach read,” noting that the typical beach read is written by a woman, and is probably not about the Byzantine Empire—unless that’s what you’re into? “If historical nonfiction has a place in your beach bag,” Duncan writes, “then it’s a beach read.” For the most part, of course, “the best beach reads go down like Hallmark holiday movies—and I mean that in the best possible way.” The beach read, it turns out, contains multitudes.
Summer Marketing Season
Felt and Not Seen
“Over the years, I’ve come to realize that sometimes a ghost isn’t always a ghost. Sometimes, telling a ghost story is a way to talk about something else present in the air, taking up space beside you. It can also be a manifestation of intuition, or something you’ve known in your bones but haven’t yet been able to accept.” Jenna Wortham on the ghost stories of her youth.
Quick Links
What happens when you co-write a book with someone who’s illiterate? YPTR has the details.LitLinks, a well stocked collection of links about a few hundred notable authors.iPoems arrives promising a plethora of downloadable poetry so you can jam to some verse on your iPod.
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When Technology Knows You Better Than You
Psychotherapist Ariel Garten redefines consciousness at TEDx Toronto. “The problem with escaping your day-to-day life,” she says, “is that you have to come home eventually.” Her question, which she answers in the affirmative, is whether we can “find ways to know ourselves without the escape? Can we redefine our relationship with the technologized world in order to have the heightened sense of self-awareness that we seek? Can we live here and now in our wired web, and still follow those ancient instructions: ‘Know thyself’?”
Bloggers Sue Huffington Post
A group of bloggers led by Jonathan Tasini have filed a class-action lawsuit against Huffington Post for $105 million, claiming a lack of compensation for their contributions. Tasini hopes to set a precedent for content creators in the digital age.
Finding Frances
Recommended Reading: Laura Van Prooyen’s poem at The Missouri Review “Location: Frances.” “When I say Frances, I mean a woman. I mean/a place. The dead cling to the land.”