Category: words

“It was known in Cromwell’s time as sudor anglicus, meaning the ‘English sweat,’ and there were five outbreaks of it in England, the first in 1485 and the last in 1551. Victims did, in fact, often die within hours of their first symptoms, developing a high fever and ‘copious malodorous sweating.’ … Because the disease killed so swiftly, and because it had other peculiar features — it seemed mainly to affect English people, even when it travelled across borders, and it was particularly infectious among wealthy young men — superstitions abounded.” – The New Yorker

The 3,600-year-old, 6×5-inch clay fragment contains the section from the Epic of Gilgamesh in which the hero recounts his dreams to his mother. The U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security seized it from the Museum of the Bible last fall after determining that it had been illegally trafficked from Iraq; Hobby Lobby, which purchased the tablet for the Museum from Christie’s in 2014, is suing the auction house for fraud; Christie’s says that a unidentified dealer admitted to authorities after the fact that the tablet’s provenance documents were forged and may launch a suit of its own. – The New York Times

“Youths see [in speculative fiction] examples of young people grappling with serious social, economic, and political issues that are timely and relevant, but in settings or times that offer critical distance. This distance gives readers an avenue to grapple with complexity and use their imagination to consider different ways of managing social challenges.” – The Conversation

Publishing books about an unfolding calamity, when the duration and outcome remain uncertain, carries obvious risks for authors and publishers. With so many unanswered questions about the virus, how it spreads and when a vaccine might arrive, works that are reported and written over the next few months risk being out of date, or dangerously incorrect, by the time they are published. The severity of the economic and political fallout is also still a big unknown. – The New York Times

Turns out, no. But here are several reasons to reread, including missing your favorite characters: “I miss the them—miss their superegos, their relatable pride, their all-too-human folly. I especially miss the characters that, despite it all, win: they get the guy, they get the gold, they get the keys to the city.” – LitHub

It’s not as if the 8th graders will get another chance. The Olympics were postponed; the Spelling Bee was canceled. They have been working much of their entire (short) lives for this. Despite heartfelt pleas and online petitions, Scripps isn’t changing its mind. – Vice

Or, more usually, why writers instruct others to do it after their deaths. “The elemental annihilation of destruction by fire is so absolute, and this is where the horror lies for me. If writing is slow, quiet, creative work, burning pages is quick, loud, and flagrantly destructive. Where once there was something, afterward there is nothing. There’s something irresistibly dramatic about the act of applying a naked flame to the corner of a page and watching the paper disappear in a sheath of fire.” – LitHub

The eternal debate about what books are good for – “I feel that literature is rarely of immediate practical help. I think the kind of knowledge reading fiction imparts is stealthy and slow-burning, and that novels rarely work as instruction manuals that we can pull off the shelf in case of emergency” – turned out to be incorrect. What’s good is that books about quarantines and lockdowns help manage the psychological aspects of the times. – Irish Times

If you’re a Janeite, you already know this. If not, truly: “To be a woman of a certain class in Regency England was to be socially distanced by default—isolated in the country-side, living at the pace of the seasons, beholden to restrictions set by others (namely, men). Set aside the reasons for being confined and we’re left with a defining commonality: the need to fill our days at home.” – Time Magazine

Author Robin Sloan: “I think you need to tread lightly, and really disguise your intentions—even to yourself, if possible—or you end up producing a sci-fi after-school special, the ‘moral of the story’ written in towering letters of flame.” – The Atlantic