The New York Review Of Books reviews the newest collection of Susan Sontag’s work.
Matthew Kirschenbaum’s new book is now available for preorders at Amazon.
I visit their site often, but until Bookslut mentioned it I didn’t realize Bookforum had a blog on their site.
Weekly Reader
Over at Grand Text Auto Scott Rettberg has put up some notes from the Remediating Literature Conference earlier this month in the Netherlands.
I have always been a big fan of Glen E Friedman’s photography ever since I first purchased Fuck You Heroes as a teenager. Via Boing Boing comes word that he has a new book which focuses on photos of the band Fugazi. While I am not a huge Fugazi fan, Friedman’s work is as good as usual and worth looking into.
The Little Professor links to a series of sites about mental illness and the Victorians. Right now I am doing some research and writing about the Victorian period for two papers I am working on. These links will be very useful.
Weekly Reader
I took the week off from blogging, but here is some weekend reading:
Two from recent issues of The New Yorker: Louis Menand asks are the wrong people voting? Also, Jon Lee Anderson reports on the war against opium in Afghanistan.
Two from the newest issue of Bookforum: Bilge Ebiri discusses comic book adaptations and Michael Wood reviews Falling Man, the newest novel from Don DeLillo.
Weekly Reader
Hey, how about some weekend reading!
Joyce Carol Oates reviews the recent reissue of The Handmaid’s Tale over at The New York Review Of Books. There is also some lovely discussions of Margaret Atwood’s other books including Surfacing.
Edwidge Danticat has a new story in a recent issue of The New Yorker.
Via The Little Professor, Ohio State has digitized some of their out of print books. I am interested in the texts about Shakespeare and Mildred Newcomb’s The Imagined World Of Charles Dickens because I am reading Oliver Twist this weekend for a class.
Prom Queen Part Three
After watching all eighty episodes of Prom Queen, I have to say I am pretty disappointed. As I mentioned before, I am very interested in the medium of “webisodes” and episodic constraints. Prom Queen did an adequate job on those fronts; each episode is paced well and uses the constraint of having a bit over a minute per episode to its advantage.
There is a lot of problems however; the asinine plot was very problematic. Who needs another popular show glorifying cattiness and superficial desires to win a frivolous award at the end of their high school career! I wish a little more time was given to the story lines about self mutilation and the girl who is a “non-nude” model.
There is a lot of potential in this medium still. The popularity of Prom Queen will hopefully lead to more. Are there any good ones readers would suggest? Either way, Prom Queen will be back in August for fifteen more episodes.
NPR Jazz Profiles
I am not a huge fan of NPR, but I am enjoying their newish Jazz Profiles series. Over the weekend I listened to the two podcasts about Miles Davis. The first is called Miles’ Styles and is more of an overview of his career. The other focuses on his album Kind Of Blue.
Checking these podcasts out also led me to two other features on Davis that NPR has done which focuses on two of my favorite albums: Sketches Of Spain and In A Silent Way.
Open Office Grammar Check
Now that there is a grammar check plugin for Open Office, I can see no reason to use Word any more. Open Office is a much better, and open source, program overall. I have been using it for about three years now almost exclusively. The lack of a proper grammar check did hurt it, but the addition of that reduces the compelling reasons to keep Word around to zero.