Category: words

Newsstands are even registering a small bump in sales. That was clear in Milan. In a busier newsstand, near a major shopping street here, I had to wait to pay for the newspaper. And when my turn came, I had to ask my questions quickly. The newsagent was impatient, answering with short sentences, and insistently looking over my shoulder. A line was forming. – Quartz

Plagues functioned as a setup for an even more crucial theme in ancient myth: a leader’s intelligence. At the beginning of the “Iliad,” for instance, the prophet Calchas – who knows the cause of a nine-day plague – is praised as someone “who knows what is, what will be and what happened before.” This language anticipates a chief criticism of Homer’s legendary King Agamemnon: He does not know “the before and the after.” – The Conversation

“If you read The Plague long ago, perhaps for a college class, … perhaps you paid more attention to the buboes and the lime pits than to the narrator’s depiction of the ‘hectic exaltation’ of the ordinary people trapped in the epidemic’s bubble, … caught up in ‘the frantic desire for life that thrives in the heart of every great calamity’: the comfort of community. The townspeople of Oran did not have the recourse that today’s global citizens have, in whatever town: to seek community in virtual reality.” – Literary Hub

What the library tells you is not that there is that much to read, but that there are no limits as to how much there is to know. The essence of the library is its limitlessness. The more time you spend in it, the more you realize that no time could ever be enough; no matter how hard you strive, you will never know it all. The revelation of your finitude comes with embarrassing pain. And when you have realized that you cannot live without that pain, your perverse relationship with the library has reached its climax. – Los Angeles Review of Books

The retailing giant has already been removing “tens of thousands” of listings from “bad actors” attempting to artificially raise prices on items such as face masks and hand sanitiser. Now it is fighting a losing battle against the writers rushing out self-published books to profit from coronavirus fears. Generally shorter than 100 pages, dozens have been published in the last few weeks, promising worried readers ways to prevent or avoid the virus. – The Guardian

This paragraph barely skims the surface of the life of P-Orridge: “Genesis led the influential British rock bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, dabbled as a dominatrix in New York, ran a soup kitchen in Kathmandu, hid out from Scotland Yard, organized a cultlike fan club that asked initiates to send in their bodily fluids, and undertook a long-running surgical project to merge identities with her wife, Jacqueline Mary Breyer, in a single nongendered being they called a ‘pandrogyne.'” – The New York Times

If you’re historian Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, you ask YA superstar Jason Reynolds to collaborate on adapting a thick tome for middle schoolers. Reynolds: “I wanted to try to figure out how to make this really complex thing that has all this information that he gave the world, how do I take it and make it feel like a fresh pair of Jordans.” – NPR

What it feels like to abandon communal reading and working in one of New York’s most glorious public spaces – not good. Said one retired professor: “I see we’ll have digital access for a lot. … But I’m not happy, I’m afraid.” – The New York Times

Also, to keep you away from the world of crowded bars or restaurants. Seriously, don’t do it. Instead, why not start a series like the many, many-volumed Discworld of Terry Pratchett? (Yes, your library is probably closed or closing, so you’ll have to get these books by e-reader or delivery, but still.) – The Guardian (UK)

There are the terrible – quack “guides” to combatting the virus that causes COVID-19 – and the amusing: “Coronavirus Zombies Volume 1: The Living Dead Apocalypse by one Maximus Williams involves a vaccine for the illness turning those who catch it into a deadly threat. Running to just 20 pages, it promises ‘scenes of violence, guns, profanity and graphic scenes of zombies that may be objectionable to some.'” – The Irish Times