Quick Hits

Goodnight Stars, Goodnight Air: Reconnecting with Children’s Books as a Parent

- | 13
The market for children’s books is probably more resistant to cultural churn than just about any other slice of the consumer economy; it’s a closed circuit that reproduces itself one generation after another.
- | 13
● ● ●
In Person

He Was Water: Kenyon Grads Remember David Foster Wallace’s Commencement Speech

- | 21
Did Wallace's speech resonate on the hot Ohio morning when he delivered it to the assembled student, or did it get lost amid the hurrah of a graduation weekend?
- | 21
● ● ●
Quick Hits

My Resolution for 2011: Stop Blaming the Internet

- | 7
The Internet was the big bogeyman, the great scapegoat of 2010.
- | 7
● ● ●
Essays

Shaving Cream and Heart Attacks and Learning When To Fear

- | 3
These are the things my son James has been afraid of in the 16-months that he's been alive: The grinding blender, the roaring vacuum, disembodied voices on the speaker phone, the time I pantomimed a broken leg, being put to bed alone in his crib.
- | 3
● ● ●
Screening Room

A Stew of Laziness: Ben Affleck’s The Town and the Elements of Bad Drama

- | 14
I find with bad movies that usually there comes a point at which I realize that no matter what follows, there's little chance that the film is going to be good.
- | 14
● ● ●
Quick Hits

When I’m in the Mood for Fiction

- | 12
Fiction can be depressing, of course, but there's something intrinsically optimistic about the process by which tragedy and frailty are turned into art.
- | 12
● ● ●
Quick Hits

Never Let You Go: Friendship in the Facebook Age

- | 15
Is it better to let a friendship end naturally or to sustain it on Facebook life support?
- | 15
● ● ●
Essays

To Teach a Kid How to Read, Teach a Kid How to Think

- | 6
If you have not been paying attention to trends in grade school pedagogy over the last couple decades, the first thing you should know is this: The way public school students are taught to understand books looks little like the way most readers of this site probably learned themselves.
- | 6
● ● ●
Essays Notable Articles

Haruki Murakami and the Art of the Day

- | 12
What appealed to me most about Murakami’s essay was the way it joined something very big, like writing a novel, with something very small, like what time each day to go to bed.
- | 12
● ● ●
Quick Hits

Reflections on Fear, Freedom, and Growing Up

- | 4
Recently two people who wouldn’t seem to have much in common—my 26-year-old brother and my one-year-old son—have both had me thinking about wonder and fear, and how their experiences of those two things are similar to each other’s, and different from my own.
- | 4
● ● ●
Essays Notable Articles

Reading War and Peace: The Effects of Great Art on an Ordinary Life

- | 46
One somewhat disquieting effect of reading War and Peace is that the more your own thoughts show up in its pages, the less original your life begins to feel.
- | 46
● ● ●
Books as Objects Notable Articles Quick Hits

In Our Parents’ Bookshelves

- | 38
Even a megabyte seems bulky compared to what can be conveyed in the few cubic feet of a bookshelf. What other vessel is able to hold with such precision, intricacy, and economy, all the facets of your life
- | 38
● ● ●
From the Newsstand

Ample Reason America is Ruined, One Good Reason it’s Not

- | 3
James Fallows thinks about government like a broken down car, such that no matter how skilled the driver or where he wants to go, he’s not going to get there. We might have been better off if that were true.
- | 3
● ● ●
Quick Hits

Selections from a Winter Reading War and Peace

- | 9
Reading War and Peace, there is the sense of beginning one of the great experiences one might have in a lifetime. It is an enervating feeling, but also a melancholy one.
- | 9
● ● ●
Lists

Family Ties: Childhood, Motherhood, and Fatherhood in Literature

- | 11
Quick Hits

Scenes of Retreat in War and Peace and Atonement

- | 2
● ●
Quick Hits

A Weapon So Powerful…

- | 2
● ●
Quick Hits

Live-Blogging The Red and the Black

-
● ●