- Haruki Murakami's Passion For Jazz.
- Jenny Trout on 50 Shades Of Grey and BDSM.
- The Millions on Italo Calvino's excellent novel Cosmicomics.
- A new interview with Edward Snowden from The Guardian.
- io9's review of the excellent episode of Adventure Time that Masaaki Yuasa did last month.
- An excerpt from Laurie Penny's new book Unspeakable Things.
- A conversation about Haiti and Dominican Republic between Edwidge Danticat and Junot Diaz.
- The Millions reviews Murakami's new novel.
- Wallace Shawn's amazing "translation" of "liberal Hollywood!!!!!"'s justification of slaughtering children in Gaza.
- Ugliness, empathy, and Octavia Butler.
Weekly Reader
Christy Dena’s insightful response to Jane McGonigal’s essay The Puppet Master Problem: Design For Real World, Mission-Based Gaming from the Second Person anthology.
Michael Filas review of N. Katherine Hayles’ My Mother Was A Computer: Digital Subjects & Literary Texts.
Daniel Green reviews the new James Wood book in the new issue of Open Letters Monthly.
Meanwhile…
The New Yorker piece on Obama’s early years in Chicago politics is another indicator he is just as scummy and slimy as the next politician. Making the right friends, the right votes, the right influences; you might counter by saying “that’s politics” but I say that if you take part in that crap, I blame you. I’d rather have no government than one filled with slimeballs. None of the above…yet again…in 2008.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn recently passed away. When we moved to Manahawkin, I remember the first friend I made was reading The Gulag Archipelago at the time. We started to bond while discussing that and other books.
Io9 offers a guide for fans of the modern Doctor Who series who wish to get into the classic series.
Veronica Esposito comments on the amazing ending of The Mill On The Floss and links to a review of the novel from a 1860 issue of The Atlantic.
PETA still sucks as much as I remember.