April 2011
28 posts
The Millions : Pitons in the Monolith: Jonathan...
“My despair about the American novel began in the winter of 1991, when I fled to Yaddo, the artists colony in upstate New York, to write the last two chapters of my second book.” So begins Jonathan Franzen’s famous essay, “Perchance to Dream,” which appeared in Harper’s fifteen years ago this month. The essay, subtitled “In the Age of ..read more.. via #smartr - my personalized newspaper
“Before 2005, students could use bankruptcy to escape education loans that...”
– Bad Education
Bedtime story from @akashicbooks: Go the F*** to...
Yes, yes, and yes.
iambikaudio:
from Akashic’s site: “a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing off to dreamland. Honest, profane, and affectionate, Adam Mansbach’s verses and Ricardo Cortés’ illustrations perfectly capture the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting your little angel down for...
Canadian Federal Elections: Their Platforms →
“Wow, they’re like little kids who’ve built a cardboard fort, and now they’re...”
– Mad as hell? Come ride Sun TV’s roller coaster of rage
What are Libraries For? →
Ebooks will become the dominant form of casual reading for adults at some point in the future1. When this happens, community and public libraries will face a major existential crisis, because a fundamental (perhaps the fundamental) function of community libraries—lending print books—will no longer be a fundamental demand from the community. Libraries that do not adjust will find their services...
Cost Of Tax Cuts For America's Rich Exceeds Value... →
Today, as Americans submit their tax returns, the wealthiest earners will each reap hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax savings.
As part of a law passed late last year, the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest Americans were extended for two years. The estimated cost to the government of that portion of the tax deal, $42 billion this fiscal year, exceeds the stated $38 billion value of the...
iambik audiobooks: LitFic Collection #2 →
Dearest Listeners, We’re happy to announce another pride-inducing collection of twelve audiobooks from iambik audio, this time more great literary fiction. You can buy the whole collection of twelve books for $49.99, or individual books for $6.99.
The Quintessentially Victorian Vision of Ogden’s... →
There are few works of greater scope or structural genius than the series of fiction pieces by Horatio Bucklesby Ogden, collectively known as The Wire; yet for the most part, this Victorian masterpiece has been forgotten and ignored by scholars and popular culture alike. Like his contemporary Charles Dickens, Ogden has, due to the rough and at times lurid nature of his material, been dismissed as...
To Whom Do We Owe This Money, Exactly? →
Which Canada Will You Vote For? →
WatchHigh Steel by Don Owen, from the NFB
“Dear Friends, I am going to be very busy over the next few months and will have...”
– Tomorrow Museum
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great...”
– [NOTE: I’ve been informed that this quote is misattributed to Woodrow Wilson & possibly fabricated. My apologies… you can’t always believe what you read on slightly crackpotish blogs dedicated to complex analysis of the numerical symbolisms in Kubrick’s The Shining,...
Scale of the Universe →
via @danparsons
