If only Odysseus had Google Maps during his 10-year journey home. Then perhaps Homer’s Odyssey would have turned out differently. Open Culture has an interactive map created by Gisèle Mounzer that tracks Odysseus’s circuitous route, “bouncing all over the Mediterranean, moving first down to Crete and Tunisia. Next over to Sicily, then off toward Spain, and back to Greece again.”
The Odyssey, Mapped
Famous in India
“His writings rarely make it to the US, and are resolutely for an Indian readership. They will win no prizes nor inspire dissertations. But for these reasons they represent the actuality of what many people in the world are reading today, outside of the newly sanctified category of the ‘global novel.’” Ulka Anjaria for Public Books on Chetan Bhagat, “possibly the most successful Indian English novelist ever” and largely unheard of in the west. For more fictional Desi perspectives, read Aditya Desai in our own pages on reading narratives of Indian women.
Nouveau Riche
“When Michael reads in one of the society columns that are hilariously reprinted here, misspellings and all, that Astrid’s jewels aren’t blingy enough, he flies into a fury of inadequacy. This leads him to try to buy one of Singapore’s rarest architectural masterpieces and turn its ground floor into a museum for his car collection, which includes a car from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; fortunately, his offer is turned down.” On Kevin Kwan’s China Rich Girlfriend.
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“The Realest Language”
Recommended reading: The Awl takes a look at the “attempt to create a completely logical, absolutely universal language,” which goes about as well as you’d expect (read: not very).
Redefining Speculative Fiction
“In a genre that has long been dominated by white men and Western mythological tropes, Ms. Okorafor’s stories, which feature young black girls in starring roles as superheroes and saviors of humanity, have been hailed as groundbreaking.” The New York Times shines a spotlight on Nnedi Okorafor and other African American science fiction and fantasy writers building on -and popularizing-a tradition of African and African American folklore in the sci fi and fantasy genre.
“Divergents threaten the system.”
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Braille Tablet Prototype
University of Michigan researchers have revealed an incredible prototype technology – a braille tablet. Current designs only allow for one line of braille, but the new prototype displays full pages of text. Find out more and watch the project leader, Dr. Sile O’Modhrain, discuss the developments at BGR. Pair with our eReader cheat sheet.
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