11.09.2009

Week in Review



Over at the Wall Street Journal Stephen Marche writes about the evolution of the book. He says, “It’s about what the book wants to be.”

Meanwhile Sergey Brin contributes an Op-Ed defense of Google’s book digitizing program. He argues it will create the library that will last forever.

The ubiquitous Malcolm Gladwell deconstructs himself in an amusing discussion at the Guardian. "I'm interested in slightly dumb, obvious questions, right…"

At the New Yorker Here to There Department Nick Paumgarten writes about inattentional blindness: “a state of such absorption in an activity that you fail to notice really obvious stuff around you, like a guy in a gorilla suit or the state of Wisconsin.”

In a video promo of his new book, Eating Animals, Jonathan Foer answers the perennial question, What’s for dinner—broccoli or a burger?

Yahoo News reports what you have to do if you want to learn about Einstein’s love letters? The answer? Take the morning commute to Tel Aviv.

Conversational Readings offers a much-deserved word of praise for John Williams’ Stoner: “Simply put, the book is about nothing more and nothing less than a human life.”

And over at the Times of London Ben Macintyre looks closely at how the Internet might be affecting storytelling: “Narrative is not dead, merely obscured by a blizzard of byte-sized information. A story, God knows, is still the most powerful way to understand.”