It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a….tandoori lamb chop?
While some turn to old-fashioned tactics to boost book sales, Nikesh Shukla is an innovator. To promote his book Meatspace, the writer jabbed a tandoori lambchop with a fork, attached… Read more »
“Vape” follows “selfie” as the OED’s word of the year
The selfie has come a long way since being named Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year in 2013. Once exemplary of millennial narcissism, selfies have quickly become as ubiquitous… Read more »
Warsaw Ghetto survivor and diarist’s private mementos lost and found
A cancelled auction of private mementos has brought diarist and Warsaw Ghetto survivor Mary Berg back into the spotlight she shied away for most of her life. The mementos, including… Read more »
An open letter to the candy industry
This week in product placement news: hip bands are staying at a Sour Patch Kids candy branded house in Brooklyn while writer are stuck striking low-cal but high price-tag deals with… Read more »
The philosophy of word processing
Edward Mendelson recently waxed philosophical on Microsoft Word for The New York Review of Books blog, comparing its genius to Plato’s theory of Forms. But Mendelson is no Microsoft Office enthusiast, he’s a devotee… Read more »
A short history of branded books and product placement in literature
Last Friday there was a flutter of literary drama over on Twitter when a Contently writer used Zadie Smith’s New York Review of Books essay to gush over a missed… Read more »
What’s in a #shelfie?
Oxford Dictionaries deigned to declare selfie the word of the year in 2013. And though they haven’t put it in the OED quite yet, it has an “official” definition. Not so with… Read more »
Roxane Gay to run “small and mighty” (and buttery) companion site for The Toast
Yesterday The Toast announced that Roxane Gay will be head of their new vertical, appropriately named The Butter. According to Toast co-editors Mallory Ortberg and Nicole Cliffe, the site will… Read more »
Before they were stars: F. Scott Fitzgerald birthday edition
So, it’s F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday today. The internet usually celebrates this day with The Great Gatsby quotes in typewriter-y fonts and cats dressed as Jay (The Great Catsby ha.… Read more »
“You speak a language that I understand not,” or, Brits fund Mandarin translation of Shakespeare
The Royal Shakespeare Company will get 1.5 million pounds ($1.63 million in real money) from the British government to translate all of William Shakespeare’s works into Mandarin. The effort, said British… Read more »