Two years of discarded library books
The Public Library of American Public Library Deaccession tracks nonfiction books withdrawn from library collections over two years. (Via.)
The Smart Set: Lauren Cerand’s weekly events
The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30pm and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please send details to lauren [at] maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication, [...]
Q&A with Lydia Davis
“I haven’t met a so-called experimental writer who likes the term,” says Lydia Davis. “‘Experiment’ carries the suggestion that it may not work.”
Today’s Tom Sawyer
I can’t decide whether Mark Twain would be amused by or disgusted with the metaphorical use to which Tom Sawyer’s whitewashing is being put in the digital age.
No dictionaries for a text-messaging world?
Sales of English-language usage guides and dictionaries have plummeted by 40% in the past four years. (But see.)
Warming his hands in the bone-picking room
Reading Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s “Letter from a Japanese Crematorium,” written after a visit to Japan for her grandmother’s funeral, feels like eavesdropping on the deepest and most spellbinding of secrets.
My cousin Takahagi, a Buddhist priest, does not want me to go to the crematorium. It is not a place for visitors. When I press [...]
Happy ending every time
Proof that Amanda Stern’s Happy Ending is truth in advertising: Laurie Anderson, reading.
McCarthy this week
Cormac McCarthy links: Will Ridley Scott really direct Blood Meridian? The Road moves Whitehead to tears cry a single tear at Dallas BBQ, and inspires 20 readings, and a scholar’s (casual) speculations.
Girl, uninterrupted
Julia Stiles gaily tromps on Sylvia Plath’s grave.
Happy weekend from the house moving professionals
My great-great-grandfather, Allen Alexander Johnston*, was born in Kentucky in 1854. He moved to Dallas before the turn of the century and founded A.A. Johnston Contracting & House Moving sometime prior to his death in 1916.
Many early house-moving platforms of the kind depicted in his ad were pulled by teams of horses. [...]
When the work’s not going well
Stephen Elliott kicked his “addiction to continual bursts of small information” by spending a month offline. In the current Poets & Writers, he’s got some suggestions for those of us who pass whole days cruising the so-called information superhighway in search of our next fix.
Divide your day into online and offline. Studies have consistently [...]
Exhibition emphasizes commonalities of religious texts
The oldest surviving texts of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths are on display side by side at the British Library. (Via.)
Denouncing homophobia is controversial?
A teacher who nearly got fired after her students published a school newspaper editorial “advocating tolerance of gays” will have to teach a different subject at another school. (Via.)
Hard-boiled, Yiddish-inflected patois
After talks with his editor, Michael Chabon spent eight months rewriting his latest novel, and shudders now at the thought of publishing the old draft.
Didn’t make the party? Take the quiz.
Thanks to everyone who came out to the When I Was a Loser party last night, and especially to those who shushed the throng of investment bankers until they were shamed into relocating their networking/backrub party outside the reading zone.
Kelly Braffet and Owen King dug out plaid shirts, concert tees, and baggy pants from [...]