A View From the Margins

I found an awesome thing from the New York Times this weekend. A Year in Reading is an interactive look at a snippet from 12 different reading materials that literary critic Sam Anderson read over the past year. Included is an audio of Sam speaking about the selection and an interactive photo of his "notations" in the margins of the selection. For every piece, Sam has written something, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, and underlined the specific lines that produced his reactions. Roll your mouse around each photo to see it up close, or just read the caption below each photo to see what he wrote. Selections include A Pale King by David Foster Wallace; Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; John McFee: The Art of Nonfiction, No. 3, an interview with writer John McFee by the Paris Review; and Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Good stuff here! The commentary is short in each section and well worth the listen! Also, I don't know Sam Anderson, but he sounds like a hottie. :D

Charles Dicken's on Google

Today is Charles Dickens birthday. You know, the author of Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, and A Tale of Two Cities. He would have been 200 years old. In case you either live under a rock and don't use Google, or just didn't pay attention, the artists at Google made an homage to Dickens in today's Google logo art.

Edit: 8/15/2012 Image removed. I don't want to be sued. Go here to see the doodle.

Doesn't that look amazing? A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite holiday reads and I read it every December. It only takes a couple hours of reading to get through the whole thing but I always enjoy it.

Happy Birthday Charles!