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Monday Afternoon Links

Patrick — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:59:40 +0000

You didn’t think a Monday could pass without some good stuff happening on the internet, did you? Today, we have an eclectic mix of the good, the bad and the incredibly strange from around the web. Dig in:

Paste Magazine is running a whole bunch of best-of lists for the past decade, including Best Memes, Best Comedians (No Louis CK? Inconceivable), and Best American Breweries. Here is their list of the 20 best books. What do you think? No Michael Pollan? Sacrilege. Still, while I don’t personally agree with some (many) of the choices, I give them credit for trying to distill all of the books — fiction and non-fiction alike — into one twenty book list. What this selection of lists proves is that the fastest way to piss someone off on the internet is to make a list. (via Kottke)

You may not have heard (yeah, right) but Sarah Palin’s book Going Rogue goes rogue all over the US tomorrow. She was on Oprah today, and both The Awl and The Washington Post had some entertaining running commentary. Additionally, Slate explains why Ms. Palin is tearing apart the Republican Party. The Second Pass opines that the cover of the book looks more like an Old Navy ad than a book cover. Doncha know.

And finally, Xiaoda Xiao, whose book The Cave Man will be published in December, writes about his experience in a Chinese forced labor prison at The Huffington Post. His crime? Accidentally tearing a poster of Mao. Suddenly, Sarah Palin seems so much more tolerable.

Read More Books By Women (You Won’t Regret It)

Patrick — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:31:24 +0000

Yesterday, The Elegant Variation linked to this list of the Top 100 novels in the English language compiled by Dick Meyer on the NPR site. He freely admits that his “taste is probably medium-brow, male and parochial in many ways. Tough. It’s my list.” I can respect that, though I think his list could use more women. Quite a few more, actually. I’m not one for setting quotas but when you only have seven (7!) books by women on your list of a hundred, well, you should probably read more women. Indeed, Girls Write Now, an organization that mentors “the next generation of women writers,” remarked on Twitter: “This is why we do what we do.”

Obviously, this is just some guy’s list, but it does reinforce a prejudice that exists in American literary culture today. The writer Maureen Johnson sums it up nicely, I think: “Once again, men write “important books,” and women write . . . books for LADIES, perhaps? Or, no. Now I remember. Chick lit and fluff.” Just a few days ago, my wife noted that while reading is considered a feminine activity (she was pointing out that we know lots of women who read, but not a lot of men), yet writing — serious writing — remains the domain of men. This shouldn’t be the case.

When people talk about the “Great American Novel” (a subject that I’d be happy relegating to the dustbin of conversational history), the names that get thrown around are almost always men, first and foremost. And, well, that should stop. Read some women, guys (I think most women read both genders, though not always). Otherwise, you’re missing out on a complete life.