-- America's Other Audobon: Genevieve Jones was a self-taught, self-published, Victorian ornithologist who made a "radical journey of art, science, and entrepreneurship." She wrote and painted the major book on bird nests and eggs. The plate pictured above is her rendering of the Baltimore Oriole's nest.
-- "One major pitfall of this tour guide approach to international literature is that even the most well intentioned readers are often content to read one writer (or just one book) from any given country." Chris Feliciano Arnold writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
-- A lost African classic finally gets its due, according to Slate. This would be Search Sweet Country by Kojo Laing, of Ghana, which is out in a new McSweeney's edition. It's high on my to-read list.
-- Ruth Franklin is writing to magazine editors, including the ones she contributes to, about their lack of female writers and editors. She begins with an open letter to Bookforum, which she encourages you to copy. (And, by the way, here is Franklin's review of W.G. Sebald's Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964–2001.)
-- Seventy-six years ago today, Gone with the Wind was published.
-- The New York Times on poetry's relationship with the Olympics, which is interesting despite leading with a sentence that makes me grit my teeth in irritation.
-- Painting the people of Florence.
-- Hook into Detroit's literary community with the buregoning Write A House project.
-- What exciting stories to mine here: Somaliland as a ghost republic, peacebuilding in the wake of the Ft. Hood massacre, weariness and healing in Kashmir, border wars in Staten Island ... and more. Here is the letter-from-the-editor by Jina Moore.
-- "Something wonderful about almost nothing."
-- Nora Ephron's death has inspired an onslaught of wonderful remembrances of her as a essayist, novelist, journalist, screenwriter, director, and a person who powerfully balanced ambition and generosity. Some favorites include those by Lena Dunham (New Yorker); Katha Pollitt (The Nation); and Rebecca Traister (Salon), as well as the New York Times obituary and the "Fresh Air" interview with Ephron (she knew who Deep Throat was all along, but no one believed her!). This March, I saw what would be Ephron's final play at the Gem Theatre in Detroit: "Love, Loss, and What I Wore," which Ephron described as "the Vagina Monologues with the vaginas." It was charming, more affecting that I expected it to be.
-- Radiolab and On the Media collaborate on a very interesting episode about data.
-- Trouble a-brew at Alabama Public Television.
-- The Library of America has a new exhibit of 88 books that have shaped America, or "books of consequence," if not necessarily quality. Included are works by Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Seuss, Elizabeth Dickinson, and Dr. Spock, as well as the Alcoholics Anonymous book. The Takeaway talks about what they missed. I agree about Hiroshima, Peyton Place, and Roots as notable gaps.
-- The last book that Lauren Alwan loved is Charles D'Ambrosio's Orphans. I'm smitten by it too -- both in the sweet connotation of the word, and in its original meaning of "to smite." I wrote about it here.
-- Poet Reginald Dwayne Betts has a new essay in the Daily Beast: "A Former Teenage Carjacker Reflects on the Supreme Court Ruling in Miller v. Alabama." This affects a lot of guys at the prison where I have a theater workshop, including a man who works with our group and runs the facility's lifer's club. I talked to him about it on Thursday: he's in a strange space of feeling hope, colored by caution, as he and others start talking about future court dates.
-- From the wonderful Ted Conover: "A Snitch's Dilemma."
-- Racialicious loves Grace Lee Boggs, who is rocking 97 years as of this month.
-- Evolving a city: David Sloan Wilson talks about using the ideas of scientific evolution and applying them to urban spaces on the APM show "On Being."
-- "How we died 200 years ago, compared to how we die today."
-- Kenyan writer Stanley Gazemba has some strong remarks for Binyavanga Wainana: "A memoir? Thank you, but where's the novel?"
-- Two important articles: "Score So Far at the University of Missouri: Books 0, Football Coach, $2.7 Million" (The Nation) and "University of Missouri Press on the Chopping Block" (Guernica).
-- "Can Dostoevsky Still Kick You in the Gut?"
-- It basically seems that nobody has ever had much faith in the future of book reviewing. And yet it persists and evolves all the same.
-- The new issue of World Literature Today turns attention to both Ireland and science fiction.
-- A fascinating article in the current issue of Harper's: "The Last Tower: The Decline and Fall of Public Housing." Must-read.
-- Julian Barnes: "My Life as a Bibliophile."
-- Jessa Crispin: "Psyched Out: Love hurts. Who's to blame?" It's a review that ingeniously pairs a biography of Margaret Fuller with Eva Illouz's provoking new treatist.
-- Six questions for Julie Otsuka.
-- Conversational Reading is hosting a Summer 2012 Big Read with Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava. Not too late to join in.
-- "A House to Look Smart In." What I find funny about this article is that it pictures a reading room where there aren't actually that many books.
-- The journals of Mavis Gallant will soon be published, which is amazing. Put it in your library and look smart. Better yet, read it.