-- Look, just look, at Kay Nielsen's knee-shakingly beautiful illustrations for a 1914 book of Scandinavian fairy tales. One is pictured above.
-- Biography of design: the different looks of Andre Breton's novel Nadja.
-- From the mixed-up files of Mr. Raymond D. Bradbury.
-- Joyce Carol Oates on the mystery of Charles Dickens.
-- Danilo Kiš: historian of infamy.
-- James Wood: "A fair amount of contemporary prose seems to have been written by people who, like Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich, refuse to accept that they will die..."
-- "There is no learning without having to pose a question." Richard Feynman on the role of scientific culture in modern society: this post made me run out to the library to pick up Feynman's book, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
-- An inventory of Gustave Flaubert's personal effects.
-- Comics journalism: The Chicago Tribune features great folks like Erin Polgreen of Symbolia Magazine ("illustrated journalism") and Josh Neufeld, author of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.
-- The Tesla Museum: it's totally going to happen. We can thank a comic book artist for making it so.
-- An exiled Iranian comics artist turns to Kafka. (See this, for example.)
-- Art for politics' sake: on the different purposes of the spectatorship of politically charged art, and why it's different than actual public engagement.
-- Edith Wharton was kinda uncomfortable with the Russians.
-- And speaking of the Russians: what's up with Anna Dostoevsky, Sophia Tolstoy, Véra Nabokov, Elana Bulgakov?
-- How does language influence us? Radiolab considers the case of man who didn't learn his first words until he was 27. Bonus fact: did you know Shakespeare was the first to use the word "unreal" on page or stage?
-- "Poets and money."
-- In Vogue: Sharon Olds' new poetry collection hooks on the end of her marriage. It's called Stag's Leap.
-- Creationists plan yet another museum for north Kentucky. Bill Nye has something to say about it.
-- A Scotsman has made the first translation of the New Testament into Doric, a dialect of northeast Scotland. He's now at work on the rest of the big book. He said he struggled most with Paul's Epistles: There are no words in Doric for ‘joy’ and ‘peace."
-- What happens when you discover more than 11,000 untested and forgotten rape kits in a warehouse? Well, one of the happier endings goes like this.
-- "The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion." Roxane Gay on trigger warnings.
-- What would Simone de Beauvoir say about Todd Akin and "legitimate rape?" Judith Thurman investigates.
-- "Confessions of a Seventh-Grade History Texas History Teacher."
-- A crime mystery series set in deadly ... Ann Arbor, Michigan?
-- Larry McMurtry's last book sale. (h/t Chris M.)
-- A fascinating collection of brochures and posters that marketed computers between 1948 and 1988 -- that is, that tried to sell the computer revolution on a nation of skeptics.
-- Twenty years ago this month, in prime time, Mary Fisher spoke at the Republican National Convention about AIDS and how the GOP was failing the disease's victims. Nobody thought she'd still be alive today.
-- Ingrid Norton is on the ground in New Orleans as a hurricane approaches and Katrina's memory looms large.
-- Finalists for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize have been announced. Among the authors honored: Jesmyn Ward, Adam Hochschild, Leymah Gbowee, and Ha Jin.
-- World Literature Today's newest issue celebrates "very short fiction."
-- "The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy." For the record: I don't do this.
-- Lena Horne talks to Kermit the Frog.
-- This would be the time when Nina Simone hung out on Sesame Street.
-- In praise of fact-checkers.
-- "This Man is Not Bought!" A gallery of anti-slavery broadsides.
-- "The Integrationists." What's it going to take to really, finally, de-segregate schools?
-- The wonderful magazine One Story has launched its spin-off this summer: One Teen Story. The Washington Post has the rundown.
-- "A Treasure Trove of Edward Gorey."
-- Marjane Satrapi's latest graphic-novel-adapted-to-film project is now out. Studio 360 interviews the writer/director about "Chickens with Plums."
-- The first draft of David Foster Wallace's life story: Scott Esposito reviews the new biography.
-- The hype is already quite high for the new books by Junot Diaz and Zadie Smith. I, for one, am all in.
-- "Promiscuous Reading." Yeah, I can relate to some of this.
-- The almost-forgotten stories of Julie Hayden.
-- In Orion: "The Fracking of Rachel Carson: The lost legacy of Silent Spring, told in fifty parts."
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