February 13, 2018

From The Guardian (George Saunders on The Complete Works of Shakespeare):

This is my reading project for the new year: to read all the plays in order. I’m putting all other reading aside. I got hold of this newish copy and I’ve been working through it. I’m not even at the good plays yet – I’m up to Henry VI, Part One – but it’s been so invigorating. I’m trying to figure out how to mimic the way he could get so many people in a play so fully realised, and I’m learning some tricks. I won’t say what they are, but my thought is that if I read all these I’ll absorb some fundamental lesson.

From The Guardian (George Saunders on Stamped from the Beginning):

I finished this before Christmas and it really has kind of changed my way of thinking. The subtitle is The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. It’s a big, 600-page academic history of what racism is and how it started and how it’s been propagated over the years, and it’s mind-blowing. It’s not passionate, it’s very, very factual, and for a white person especially it gives you some great tools with which to continue to exterminate your own racism. So I recommend that one pretty highly.

From Harper's:

Americans find the voluntarily childless to be morally outrageous.

From Harper's:

Regular, correct performance of Muslim prayers can improve low-back pain.

From The Economist:

For many it is a reflex as unconscious as breathing. Hit a stumbling-block during an important task (like, say, writing a column)? The hand reaches for the phone and opens the social network of choice. A blur of time passes, and half an hour or more of what ought to have been productive effort is gone. A feeling of regret is quickly displaced by the urge to see what has happened on Twitter in the past 15 seconds. Some time after the deadline, the editor asks when exactly to expect the promised copy.