Rin Tin Tin

My review of Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin on Newcity. Goddamnit, can she write.

Literature Map?

I found this website (via Flavorwire), called Literature Map in which you type in an author, then it shows you a bunch of other authors who people who like your author also like?  Or something.  I'm not really sure but it's mildly amusing.  I typed in my all-time favorite, Margaret Atwood, naturally, and here's what I got:

Then I clicked on Zadie Smith and got this:

I'm not crazy about Wally Lamb but otherwise seems reasonable. 

Font size

Great article on Slacktory re: the ratio of authors names to their book titles.  They show a few examples of authors of increasing fame and also of increasing font size - check out this progression of Michael Chabon's covers:

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My interview with the author of Green Girl...

Twilight belt

Found this awesome infograph on Goodreads re: who loves Twilight and who doesn't.  Interesting, no?  I'm in Illinois, which, as a light blue, I can only assume doesn't totally hate it.  No surprise that it's read by 12x more women than men.  I don't really understand why Utah is singled out - 6th most readers? Who cares? 

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Oh, the Humanities!

Last weekend, my friend MZ and I went to a couple of events in the Chicago Humanities Festival - we saw Jonathan Franzen (and Isabel Wilkerson) and Joshua Foer. 

Franzen and Wilkerson were winning some kind of award - there was a HUGE crowd with what I figure must have been Chicago's most ardent readers.  Also some of Chicago's most ardent queue-ers.  These lunatics were trying to make this crazy-long line, and then when they opened the door, it all went to shit, and lots of people got very, very upset.  I never saw so many old people get so distressed about line management.  You'd have thought we were in a war-time bread line. 

I really thought seeing Franzen was going to be the highlight of the day, but I most enjoyed Joshua Foer's chat - that probably shouldn't come as a surprise - I was completely obsessed with his book, Moonwalking with Einstein, ever since I read it earlier this year for Newcity.   He was very charming, smart and funny - it's such an interesting topic (memory)...  As in the book, the real challenge is actually supporting why it's even worth trying to develop the memory when there are some many external memory storage areas available (ie, smart phones, computers, etc.  Remember when you were a kid and you knew all your best friends' phone numbers?  Now I barely know my own husband's because it's stored in my phone.)  He took another crack at answering that and came up with a pretty good answer - he think that as external memory devises become more and more prevalent, we may discover the impact on creation - he thinks that memories are the "raw data" that lead to creativity and innovation.  Makes sense. 



I also enjoyed listening to Wilkerson - I was only vaguely aware of her book, The Warmth of Other Suns, about the great migration - but, I bought a copy and look forward to reading it.