Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- Farmageddon (“If you long for the days of an agrarian based democracy and family life on the farm, you have to buy Terry Redlin prints to capture the time. If it ever really existed.”)
- Rescuing Books (“Being told to keep two copies of a book in stock and to throw away the third, knowing full well we’d be ordering third and fourth and fifth copies in just another month or two, seemed like some kind of cruel waste of so many people’s energies.”) (via)
- How to Be a Writer (“Let her find her own truth, even if she has to spin outrageous lies in search of it.”) (via)
Book Review of the Week
- Bullshit Heaven (“Aren’t the aesthetics of garbage just another form of garbage?”) (via)
Blog Headline of the Week
Bookish Linkage
- Geoff Dyer sends up a writing style that makes him (and me) want to yell, “Get on with it!“
- Should public libraries charge rental fees?
- It’s amazing what will lead people to buy a book. (But who really cares what the reason may be?)
- Do facts spoil history books?
- Herman Melville’s lifetime literary earnings
- The Hunter S. Thompson you don’t know.
- We are now, like the others, officially a state without Borders.
- Technovelgy, your guide to and glossary of science fiction ideas, technology and inventions. (via)
- Kinna has a nice round-up of international book awards and shortlists.
Nonbookish Linkage
- The death of Osama bin Laden led more Americans to feel threated by Muslims living in the U.S. (via)
- I’m stunned, I tell you, absolutely stunned! “An analysis of Rolling Stone magazine covers finds female artists are increasingly presented as sex objects.”
- Which came first, God or man? (via)
- On a related note, God’s approval rating is just above 50 percent, although 40 percent are “not sure” what they think of his job performance.
Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.
Carl Sagan, Cosmos