50+ authors tell Salon about their favorite books of the year. This is a really solid list.
Though, a bit disappointed Chad Harbach’s “The Art of Fielding” wasn’t mentioned. And equally disappointed that Jon Ronson, who wrote “The Psychopath Test” - which was one of my favorite books of the year - chose Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize winning book “A Visit From The Goon Squad,” a book that made me question who chooses the Pulitzer. (I didn’t like it.)
Our friends at Random House Children’s Books have generously agreed to donate one brand-new book for each new follower we gain on Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter this week. Those books will go to thousands of schools and programs serving kids from low-income families across the country.
Please Re-blog!
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Consider yourselves followed (and re-blogged).
(via ampahsand)
“The Phantom Tollbooth” is not just a manifesto for learning; it is a manifesto for the liberal arts, for a liberal education, and even for the liberal-arts college. What Milo discovers is that math and literature, Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, should assume their places not under the pentagon of Purpose and Power but under the presidency of Rhyme and Reason. Learning isn’t a set of things that we know but a world that we enter.”
Norton Juster’s “The Phantom Tollbooth” at 50 : The New Yorker
This is just a really great article about a really great book.
(via ryeisenberg)(via ryeisenberg)
Hackers, spirit animals, CIA operatives and guns in the desert — the final half of Zach Baron’s epic pursuit of Hunter S. Thompson’s ghost across the Vegas Strip.
After the briefing, the weapons came out: sawed-off shotguns, AK-47s, short-barrel Uzis, Desert Eagles, big revolvers, and, on a blanket, near the ground, a Browning M1919 machine gun. Next to the Browning, a man laid out, piece by piece, a DPMS SASS, a modified AR-10 rifle which, its owner told me, was accurate up to 500 yards, and so was currently being wasted on the range here — a mere 150 yards or so to the rock bluffs and mountain.
We watched as the hackers set up their firing zone, dragging out bits of rebar and chicken wire, old PCs, sofas, traffic lights, wooden crates, and paper targets, including an Osama bin Laden and a couple of lady zombies. There were a few children running around, including a tiny girl with a handgun — it looked like a .22 — holstered at her waist. Most of the adults wore black T-shirts despite the considerable heat, paired with gym or cargo shorts, floppy hats and shades. One guy was wearing a kilt. Several had dyed their hair purple. There were more women than you might guess.
Up and down the line could be heard the metallic snap of rounds sliding into their chambers. Off to the left of the main firing range, three men were busy cobbling together what would reveal itself to be a .50-caliber sniper rifle, about 4 or 5 feet long. This is what U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan use to shatter car engine blocks at great distances and to kill enemies from as far as a mile-and-a-quarter away. Its bullet isn’t much smaller than a classic Coca-Cola glass bottle. When you fire the .50-cal, a great big cloud of dust goes up around the shooter, and the ground shakes.
The all-clear was given, and the shooters raised up as one. The noise was incredible. Out of the rock face down the range, you could see the heavier guns taking their toll on the shale and dirt in the back. Chunks of the bluffs that backstopped the field were flying off, chipped to pieces in a steady fusillade of automatic weapons fire. The sound was all whistles, squeaks and bursts of full-auto mayhem.
By the water jugs, Fleur looked sick.
