Phew, that was a long title. My fingers are tired from typing it all out. Are we smart enough to make concise titles? Often but not always! Snarking aside, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are (affiliate link: Book Depository) is a wonderfully accessible overview of studies of animal cognition. de Waal’s basic argument is that as humans get better at designing tests that take into account animal physiognomy, habits, and social structure, animals perform better on those tests. The most common limitation on tests of animal cognition is not animal, but human, intelligence. An example: When…
35 CommentsReading the End Posts
Happy Wednesday, all! If your question was “will Gin Jenny find a way to scream about Star Wars Rebels on podcast even though it’s not a TV-show-related podcast?” the answer is (of course) yes. Watch Star Wars Rebels! You will definitely not regret it! You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go! Episode 65 What We’re Reading To the Secretary: Leaked Embassy Cables and America’s Foreign Policy Disconnect, Mary Thompson-Jones Star Wars Rebels (okay this I am watching BUT IT IS REALLY GOOD) Brooklyn, Colm…
Continue readingReading the End Bookcast, Ep.65: Best Eras in History and Charles Burns’s Black Hole
2 Comments Okay, I know we have The Ringer now, and The Ringer has brought us Actual National Treasure Sam Donsky. Is it wrong that I still miss Grantland, though? They had an incredible stable of writers with a particular gift for writing about important things through the lens of seemingly unimportant things. Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me (affiliate link: Book Depository), from Grantland alum and UpRoxx writer Steven Hyden, reminded me of what was so special about Grantland’s glory days. And yes, okay, the subtitle is a little grandiose. The meaning of life isn’t on offer here, but Hyden gets…
28 CommentsOkay, Elizabeth Nunez got me good about two-thirds of the way through her latest book, Even in Paradise (affiliate links: Book Depository, Amazon). As a writer from my homeland put it in her fictionalized version of a romance between Miranda and an educated Caliban: Pass [the Miranda test] and I believe you. Fail it and all you say about the races being equal, that character, not color, is what matters, becomes theoretical. I was like, Oo, a romance between Miranda and an educated Caliban? SOUNDS GREAT, and I googled it thinking probably Cesaire, and while Cesaire did in fact write…
25 CommentsHappy Monday, team! Today I’m over at the Oxford Dictionaries blog yammering about genre. Basically it is my considered opinion that literature has genuinely failed us by having so few available filters, and I think the publishing world should do something about it. In 2013, the most recent year for which we have data, the US, UK, and Canada published over half a million books altogether. Yet of this infinitely categorizable bounty, we’ve apparently only managed to sort books into as many genres as your neighborhood Waterstones has clusters of shelves. I call shenanigans! Why should it be so hard…
10 CommentsEvery time I read anything about North Korea, I spend the next two weeks collaring everyone who comes near me and screaming my new North Korea information into their faces. I have still not recovered from the image Barbara Demick left me with in Nothing to Envy of dozens and dozens of North Koreans squatting at the sides of all the roads, waiting and waiting for something that was never going to come. So it was with photographer Wendy Simmons’s My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth. The full post here could just be moments in this…
25 CommentsHappy Wednesday, everyone! Thanks so much to everyone who’s asked about flooding in Louisiana and checked in to see if I’m okay. My bit of the state’s totally fine, so it’s just lots of worry and hug-sending to the people in places where water was several feet deep. Anyway! So now it is podcast day! I included a cut at the end of the podcast so y’all can witness THIS phenomenon, which is very real: I like pretending Whiskey Jenny is insulting me. she falls apart reassuring me of her love. she just shrieked NO YOU ARE THE COOL RABBIT.…
8 CommentsHappy Friday, everyone! How to cull your books: The Awl guide. Let me tell you my method, team. Take all the books. Line them up on the floor, right to left, by how much you love them. Then draw a line somewhere in the middle of that long line of books and cull everything to the left of your line. Boom. Done. More on fan entitlement (and a bit of side-eye for Steven Moffat, which I am never not here for) from The Mary Sue. I’m really digging Maddie Myers’s work on The Mary Sue these days, y’all! Go follow…
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