British book thieves are abundant, quirky.

Some people steal cars, others jewelry. But the inner geek in some thieves has them gravitate toward their local bookstore for a little bit of Freddy Fast Fingers action.

According to The Guardian, British bookstores report that theft hasn't abated despite security measures, but yet they also accept book loss as a way of life. "[The thieves are] simply reselling them on eBay," says James Daunt, the chief executive officer of Waterstones.

Daunt believes Waterstones kleptomaniac clientele tends to be the high-minded, intellectual type, as they tend to steal the textual works of philosophers. "Whenever I’d go past Kierkegaard I’d make sure they and Wittgenstein were all there, but often the odd one or two would be gone and it always made me smile."

Elsewhere in the country, tastes vary. In the small industrial town of Walsall at Southcart Books, it's Anton LeVey's Satanic Bible being pinched as some light reading. In Oxford at Blackwell's, it's J.R.R. Tolkien (he taught at Oxford University after all) and George R.R. Martin's works going out the door unpaid. And at The Beckenham Bookshop in Beckenham along with City Books in Hove, both notice Beatrix Potter is a favorite freebie to be snatched.

But John Clepp of the London Review Bookshop recounts one thief who asked for some understanding for their thieving ways:

"We caught a gent last Christmas with £400-worth of stolen books in his trousers and elsewhere. We grabbed all of the bags back, but he returned about half an hour later to reclaim a half-bottle of whisky and his dream journal, which had been at the bottom of one of the bags of stolen books. As we showed him the door he told us: 'I hope you’ll consider this in the Žižekian spirit, as a radical reappropriation of knowledge.'"

If it was quality whisky, can you blame him?

Agatha Christie was kind of a grouch.

Shocking news that a woman who largely only wrote about murder and death was not a lighthearted soul, but letters on display reveal Agatha Christie was generally irked by life.

The letters, which will be on exhibition at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival held in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, show Christie was annoyed by most anything, like over the covers of her books.

According to The Guardian, for her 1947 book The Labours of Hercules, a Pekingese was featured on the cover. Harmless, you might say. Her family found laughs in it, but Christie was furious and wrote her publisher:

"The wrapper design for Hercules has occasioned the most ribald and obscene remarks and suggestions from my family – All I can say is – Try again!!" (sic).

Another time, she complained the cover of another book made the main character look like he was "going to a funeral and dressed accordingly."

In 1967, she apparently found out her latest book was already released without her receiving an advanced copy. She was in a "fury" when she found out the book was already on sale in Helsinki, of all places.

"It’s usually [available] in November and then it comes in very handy for sending to friends at Xmas time – but one can hardly send it as that now? I do think it’s treating your authors disgracefully."

More than anything, Christie was annoyed by aging. As a 59-year old, she wrote to a friend, Bertie Meyer, who was staging a play based on one of her books. "I've had letters now from different fans expressing surprise that I am 'such an old lady'," she wrote, adding about pictures of herself:

"Nobody likes [the photos], possibly, perhaps, because they don’t seem to have been touched up at all? All lines and wrinkles – and dash it all, I'm not 70 – not yet 60."

If you want to read more of Christie's moaning and complaining (so, you know, you feel like a cheery lad by comparison), the festival will be held July 20-23.

Ayn Rand won't go away.

She's getting irked because she saw someone do something nice.

Ayn Rand is either a philosopher, a genius, and a skilled writer,

OR

She's a selfish, frightening, and a miserable hack at making books.

Either way, she's as popular as ever.

The way you view her says as much as your view on literature as it does your own personal moral compass. While Rand wrote two novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, it is her creation and development of a philosophical movement of Objectivism--featured in her two books--that keeps her memory alive 35-years after her death.

Did you just ask her for a cookie? Did you??

While her philosophy's scope darts in a dozen directions, one area stands forth today. In layman's terms, Objectivism argues that people should be selfish for their own personal betterment, and that personal self-interest in the only proper moral action. In essence, Objectivism bristles at altruistic behavior, and finds nothing good in doing good deeds for others. Want to eat that last cookie instead of sharing it? Objectivism would tell you to have it all for yourself, then buy a new bag of Oreos and refuse to share them with your friends or loved ones. Keep those cookies away from the hungry people most, too.

Put another way, it's a fancy way to explain being greedy.

A how-to guide on how to be mean!

Jonathan Freedland, a columnist with London's Guardian newspaper, focused on how Rand's philosophy has been embraced with open arms by the current La Casa Blanca administration and executives in Silicon Valley, with believers like Donald Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, House Speaker Paul Ryan, the founder of Uber, Travis Kalanick, and even the deceased Steve Jobs, who called Atlas Shrugged one of the "guides of his life." It seems Ayn Rand is more popular in death than she ever was in life.

Says Freedland:


"No wonder the tech companies don’t mind destroying, say, the taxi business or the traditional news media. Such concerns are beneath the young, powerful men at the top: even to listen to such concerns would be to betray the singularity of their own pure vision. It would be to break Rand’s golden rule, by which the visionary must never sacrifice himself to others.

[...]

Such an ideology will find a ready audience for as long as there are human beings who feel the rush of greed and the lure of unchecked power, longing to succumb to both without guilt. Which is to say: for ever."


If, by chance, you feel the allure of Ayn Rand and Objectivism slowly wooing you, like you wouldn't mind being selfish and only praising yourself, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver had a quick comedic segment a couple seasons ago asking why Ayn Rand was still a thing:





Why IS Rand a thing? Because selfishness is a thing, and selfishness is easy.

That said, slogging through a thousand pages of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead is hard. Be selfish and refuse to subject yourself to them.

Yeah, but how's Eeyore going to take the news?

Looks like Christopher Robbin is day drinking again.

To celebrate the 90th anniversary of Winnie-the-Pooh's first book, an authorized sequel will come out next month in the form of four short stories written by four different children's authors.

One of the authors, Brian Sibley, has decided to introduce a new character into the world of Pooh Corner. In his short story, The Best Bear in All the World, on a cold and snowy day Penguin arrives and befriends Pooh. As the name implies, Penguin is just that, a penguin, one that apparently has bad directional skills since he's somehow ended up in a remote British wood.

"The thought of Pooh encountering a penguin seemed no more outlandish than his meeting a kangaroo and a tiger in a Sussex wood, so I started thinking about what might have happened if, on a rather snowy day, Penguin had found his way to Pooh Corner," said Sibley to The Guardian, trying to sound all rational and reasonable.

Indeed, Sibley's motivation came from an old photo he saw of Winnie-The-Pooh's original author, A.A. Milne, playing with his son in the 1920s, a photo that includes the original Winnie-the-Pooh teddy bear playing alongside a nameless penguin.

Squeak looks as charming as muscle for the mob.

The famed Harrod's of London, which sold all the original toys that inspired the characters, told The Guardian that it believes the Milnes might have been playing with a toy the department store sold in the 1920s, a rigid, stock-still penguin the store named Squeak.

We all really know this just means Eeyore is being pushed to the side again. No one ever mentions Eeyore, and Penguin is now compounding matters. Poor Eeyore's just going to enter a level of donkey ennui unmatched in the animal kingdom at this point.




Photograph: Culture Club/Getty Images

First edition of "Alice in Wonderland" to go to auction, still considered sort of ugly.

When Alice in Wonderland was ready to be first published in 1865, the book's contented author, Lewis Carroll, was fairly pleased with its outcome. But the illustrator of Alice, Sir John Tenniel, didn't quite feel the same way though.

Tenniel wasn't just unhappy--he hated how his illustrations looked when they were printed by the machines.

A wonky looking Cheshire Cat meets Alice.

In June of 1865, 2,000 copies of Alice were printed, but the release was held. Fifty copies were sent to Carroll to own and distribute as he wished to friends and loved ones. Once Tenniel saw the drawings though, he turned to Carroll and begged a second chance.

On August 2, 1865, Carroll wrote in his diary, "Finally decided on the reprint of Alice, and that the first 2,000 shall be sold as waste paper." Somewhere, a town dump unknowingly became the richest library in England, if only for a day.

Carroll even bit the financial bullet for his collaborator, taking a £600 hit to do a second printing. In 2016 money, that's the equivalent of Carroll giving his friend nearly a £69,000 do-over.

In the end, the book was reprinted with different drawings and became an international treasure. Carroll's original fifty copies were handed out to various people, and over time the majority were lost. Twenty-three still exist, but only six belong in private hands. One of those six copies goes to auction this month through Christie's for an estimated purchase price of $2-to-$3 million.

With no regrets and no do-overs, hopefully.




photo: Christie's Images Ltd.

Los Angeles Times critic asks if Shakespeare and Cervantes ever sort of had a connection.

"What would Cervantes do..."

Later this week is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, which means all the crazy lovely little anecdotes and what the--? cute side stories are burrowing out of the woodwork to commemorate the Bard's life and work.

Cases in point:

NPR talks about Shakespeare's love of scenes based around large meals--mainly because people die shortly thereafter in his dramas. It's like your family's Thanksgiving if everyone gave in to the simmering turmoil over grandma burning the candied yams again.

The Guardian looks at "Bed tricks and broken women: Shakespeare's guide to love," in case you thought the glory days of romance involved bathing once a month.

And the Los Angeles Times resorts to daydreaming that Shakespeare is somehow connected to Cervantes.

It's true. Cervantes died 400-years ago this year as well. In fact, it was 400-years ago this week, too (although by different calendars--Julian vs. Gregorian--just play along). But the Spanish Cervantes and the English Shakespeare almost assuredly never met, one of the greatest shames in literary history. The closest connection ever posited is that an elderly Shakespeare adapted an early partially-translated segment of Cervante's Don Quixote and named the second rate play The History of Cardenio. And even that's a stretch connection.

That's it. That's the only relation between two of history's greatest writers who died nearly the same time, separated by a relatively small gulf of water.

And it's probably the only time Shakespeare's attempt at a similar work paled in comparison to another.

A man piles books up across NYC to empty his bookshelves.

Listen up if you're looking to declutter your home. It's possible to artistically arrange your unwanted property throughout a major city, have it find a home, and not be considered a litterer.

Shaheryar Malik, an art director from London living in New York City, decided to lighten the load of his home library by placing about forty books in eight individual stacks throughout Manhattan and have his friend take a single picture to document the moment. Then he walked away unsure what would happen.

According to The Guardian, each book included Malik's email address and directions to contact him wherever the book ended up. Malik says that he's received over sixty emails from thirty countries, including recently from a woman in Holland saying she read one of his books and left it on a local subway there to pass it on.

It all started when Malik was crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and decided to take a ubiquitous selfie. Instead, an idea occurred, as he tells The Guardian: "Then I stopped and thought: 'Instead of taking the picture that has been taken millions of times, I’m going to share something different with the world.'"

.

The book titles include Physics for You and The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking.

Mailk never said he was going to share literary books with the world.

Just something different.

And it's fun.




photos: Dani Yim

100-year old 'lost' Beatrix Potter story to be published.

Tupac and Biggie aren't the only people coming out with new material long after death. Beatrix Potter is now pulling the same stunt.

Over 70-years after the Peter Rabbit author's death and over 100-years after she wrote it, the recently discovered The Tale of Kitty-In-Boots will be released this September. Long thought lost, a search was undertaken by book publisher Jo Hanks two years ago after she discovered a letter Potter wrote to her publisher in 1914. In the letter, Potter states she has a new story written centering around "a well-behaved prime black Kitty cat, who leads rather a double life."

Hanks searched the Victoria & Albert archive in London for the book, and found three 'lost' manuscripts, along with a sketch of Kitty drawn by Potter herself.

I think he just took out Peter Rabbit with a rifle.

The rest of the book's drawings will come from famed illustrator Quentin Blake, best known for his work alongside Roald Dahl.

The rest of Beatrix Potter's work will be released when she comes out of hiding and admits she's still alive.





photo: Beatrix Potter/Frederick Warne & Co. & the V&A Museum

Fairytales are old. And it turns out they're a lot older than originally thought.

A study released by the Royal Society Open Studies journal reveals that fairytales began earlier than once thought. A lot earlier.

Looking at common links between 275 Indo-European stories, Durham University anthropologist Dr. Jamie Tehrani and folklorist Sara Graça da Silva from the New University of Lisbon concluded fairytales pre-date commonly believed origins by thousands of years.

As The Guardian, which spoke to Tehrani and da Silva, writes:


"Analysis showed Jack and the Beanstalk was rooted in a group of stories classified as The Boy Who Stole Ogre’s Treasure, and could be traced back to when eastern and western Indo-European languages split – more than 5,000 years ago. Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin to be about 4,000 years old. A folk tale called The Smith and the Devil was estimated to date back 6,000 years to the bronze age."

The Smith and the Devil never gained the popularity of other stories, although it takes on similar themes of a trickster (the Devil, shockingly) being tricked (noo!).

By comparison, Aesop looks like a new kid to the storyteller game by being only 2,500 years old or so. And Mother Goose? Let's not speak of her amateur hour shenanigans again.

'Lord of the Rings' map annotated by Tolkien found in rare book shop.

Acclaimed illustrator Pauline Baynes was working on a detailed map corresponding with a new edition of The Lord of the Rings in 1960. During her time crafting the finer points of places Hobbits like to hang out, she worked with J.R.R. Tolkien closely--and the author was a stickler for minutia.

According to The Guardian, Tolkien annotated an older version of a map included with earlier editions of his book, which included notes on where trees might exist, and telling Baynes that Hobbiton "is assumed to be approx at latitude of Oxford," where he was teaching.

Baynes folded the map up and placed it inside her copy of the book--which, over the decades since, largely remained forgotten until it ended up in a rare book store.

Now up for sale for £60,000, the map is on display at the University of Oxford until a map fiend or Lord of the Rings addict gets a second mortgage on their house and purchases it.



photo: Blackwells, via The Guardian

This Week in Science!!!

Here's the occasional wrap-up of anything noteworthy in the world of science.

Starting off with the magical allure of sweet potatoes:


Story One:

Britain has gone exotic and figured out how to grow a sweet potato!!!

A thousand years of literature, a language that dominates the world, a former empire that swept the planet--and now the British have figured out the sweet potato. The circle is complete.

After centuries of being thwarted, farmers have used polythene covered raised outdoor beds to create a warm enough environment for the sweet starchy deliciousness to grow. This after a white-toned Caribbean version of the sweet potato was considered "too sweet" for the British palate. Don't worry, there was a quick flash of the British showing culinary personality, but--phew--they wisened-up and ditched that idea quickly

Now the new, hearty, less-sweet sweet potato with a cockney accent is going to market, being sold at grocery stores throughout the U.K for the first time. It'll pair nicely with all gruel and porridge dinners served seven-days-a-week.


Story Two:

Younger Australians making it rain for washed and organic potatoes!!!

The English-speaking world is beside themselves with Potato Fever, and the only cure is more potatoes.

A poll of Aussies aged 25-34 showed they were willing to spend more potatoes than older people. Don't give them that 5lb bag o' potatoes in plastic stuff--they want their potatoes like they want their morals: organically grown and loose

Australian vegetable industry representative body AUSVEG wants farmers to be able to raise the prices on their organic potatoes as the fever sweeps the nation. Research organization Colmar Brunton finds that Australians already pay more for potatoes than any other vegetable--so if farmers can easily organically grow them in Australia's warm climate (take that, Britain!), farmers can increase prices even further still.

Alexander Miller, spokesperson for AUSVEG, says, "While mashing, roasting and boiling are the most popular methods of preparation, potatoes are also regularly served alongside carrots, pumpkin and broccoli as a tasty accompaniment."

The real news here is that Australia eats pumpkins and think they're tasty.


Story Three:

Power! Power!! Merciless Potato Power!!!

Britain isn't going to drown in potatoes now that they're banging them out. They're putting them to use.

The 2 Sisters Food Group, known throughout the nation for their shepherd and Cumberland pies, mashed potatoes, and keeping Brits ruddy-cheeked and satiated, has developed a bio-refinery at their Carlisle plant using waste left over from their sea of potatoes to create energy. Now picture eating a shepherd's pie while thinking of "waste." Mmmmmmm.

With power being generated from a single waste source, the process is streamlined at the plant. Everything from potato peelings, whole unused potatoes, and discarded cottage pies are used. A pie not eaten in Britain? Clearly it was overlooked.

The bio-refinery will produce 3,500 megawatt hours per year in electricity (the equivalent of powering 850 homes) and a further 5,000 megawatt hours per year in steam, ensuring that no Brit will go without bland food for years to come.


Story Four:

Potato mania has overtaken the Ecuadorian government!!!

Tired of lackluster potatoes? Unimpressed with their performance? Do they remind you of any average lumpy citizen of Rhode Island?

Ecuador hears you.

The government of Ecuador is heavily investing in high-performing, high quality, pest and disease-resistant potato varieties. Under this new push, the government hopes to see 30% of arable land devoted to the tater.

The varieties come under a myriad of names, from the Super Chola to the Puca-Shungo, the Yana-Shungo to the Fripapa, the Victoria to the Libertad.

You know who isn't free of the potato's grip though?

Humanity.

The first known printed use of an ellipsis has been discovered.

Three little dots. Three little points of punctuation that trail off or trail in, leaving conversation in limbo or joining the chat midway.

But when did it first appear in print?

While personal handwritten letters are known to show an ellipsis by 1580 and 1585, Dr. Anne Toner of Cambridge University believes she has found the first-ever printed use of an ellipsis. It appears in the form of repetitive hyphens (instead of dots) in the Roman dramatist Terence’s play, Andria, which was translated into English for a British audience by famed translator Maurice Kyffin in 1588.

Toner's new book, Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission, dives into the history of punctuation that allows writers to create dramatic tension through grammatical vagueness.

As Toner writes, "It’s interesting to think about whose idea it was to use what turned out to be a very useful resource...was it the translator of the Terence play, or the printer? Who the agent was behind the mark is very unclear."

Apparently it's not Terence, who isn't known for much in literary history, and now he can't even claim the ellipsis. Poor guy just can't win.

Twenty academic books that changed the world--at least according to the U.K.

In advance of Academic Book Week next month, a panel of librarians, booksellers, and publishers in the U.K. have whittled down a list of two hundred academic books to twenty, creating a list they claim are the tomes that changed the world. Now, they want the general public to vote which book is the singularly most influential book that stands heads and shoulders above the rest.

Two works of the twenty are fiction: George Orwell's 1984, and the complete works of Shakespeare. (I gather they couldn't pick just one.)

The remaining eighteen books are all nonfiction, with a heavy leaning toward writers from Europe, and especially the United Kingdom. Indeed, only two writers are Americans by birth (Rachel Carson and Germaine Greer), and two were born elsewhere and moved to the United States at a later point in life (Albert Einstein and Thomas Paine).

Poor France only has one writer on the list: Simone de Beauvoir

I know I'm shocked--stunned, really--that a bunch of British experts find no use for anything French.

The complete list:

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

Orientalism by Edward Said

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The Complete Works by William Shakespeare

The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer

The Making of the English Working Class by EP Thompson

The Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

The Republic by Plato

The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

The Uses of Literacy by Richard Hoggart

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Ways of Seeing by John Berger



Don't kid yourself. No one from Asia, Africa, or South America ever wrote anything that changed the world. Everyone in the U.K. knows this.

Need a dose of Jane Austen on your phone every day?

Few writers over the years have such a devoted, fanatical fan base as that of Jane Austen. Something about fancy dresses and stilted love panned out over 300 pages does it for people.

So, the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England, has created an app that will send you a quote from her books every day, and will even schedule to deliver it to you at the time of day you desire. Service with a smile! Unless you're being served by Mr. Darcy, because I'm sure he never smiled.

“People are always interested in her quotes. They’re always witty, lively, succinct and very perceptive - and they do often describe people’s characters really well,” David Baldock, the centre’s director tells London's Guardian newspaper.

A couple of sample quotes the app supplies:

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance." — from Pride and Prejudice (1813)

"There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them." — from Mansfield Park (1814)

"How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!" — from Persuasion (1817)

Let's be honest here. This app better supply a heavy dose of Mr. Darcy quotes, all frowny and moody, or there will be hell to pay.

Follow the Swedish money: Apparently betting on the Nobel Prize in Literature is a thing.

If it's been said once, it's been said a thousand times: You're not a degenerate gambler until you play the long odds and throw some cash on Margaret Atwood winning a Nobel.

With the announcement of 2014's Nobel Prizes coming up in October, apparently one can lay some money on the outcome of who the next Laureate in Literature will be. And it's not just a recent phenomenon either. As Alex Donahue, spokesperson for Ladbrokes--the UK's leading gambling site--tells The Guardian, "We've been taking bets for this year from the day of the announcement last year," when Alice Monroe was announced as the Nobel winner.

Favorites to win aren't just randomly assigned odds. As Donahue states, it's all about how the Swedes are betting, as they have their fingers on the pulse of momentum. "It's always worth following the Swedish money and at this stage the one they like is Ngugi wa Thiong'o," said Donahue, referring to the famous Kenyan writer who was arrested in 1976 on orders by the country's vice president for creating uncensored political messages. Ngugi would end up writing one of his future novels, Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ (Devil on the Cross), on prison toilet paper while spending a year behind bars.

Ngugi might have momentum with a betting line at 6/1, but he still doesn't have the best odds. Those go to Haruki Murakami at 5/1. Others in the realm of potential include Joyce Carol Oates at 12/1, Philip Roth at 16/1, Thomas Pynchon at 25/1, Don Delillo at 25/1, and Margaret Atwood at 33/1. The likes of Salman Rushdie, Cormac McCarthy, and even that plagiarizing literary sage Bob Dylan bring up the betting odds rear at 50/1.

Dylan's odds, according to Donahue, are based off two bets that came in from Sweden.

Hell, if that's all it takes, I'll find two Swedish guys named Bjorn and Henrik to lay $5 on me and call myself a Nobel contender.

It's "delicious": Margaret Atwood just wrote a book, but you won't be able to read it for a hundred years.

Are you a Margaret Atwood fan? Are you at least 1-year old? Odds are you'll never read at least one book she's written.

Atwood--winner of the Man Booker Prize (and probably a Nobel Prize some year)--is the first author to sign up for The Future Library project, an endeavor created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson which aims to have 100 authors write books that will be sealed away, unread, until the year 2114.

Further adding a level of complexity to it all, Paterson just planted 1,000 trees in the Norwegian town of Nordmarka, just outside Oslo, which will spend the next century growing--before being felled--and used to create the paper on which the 100 books by 100 authors will be printed on and, hopefully, read by someone, anyone.

Atwood takes great glee in being a part of the whole project, telling The Guardian, "What a pleasure [...] You don't have to be around for the part when if it's a good review the publisher takes credit for it and if it's a bad review it's all your fault. And why would I believe them anyway?"

All works created for the project, including Atwood's, will be placed in a special room planned to open in 2018 at the Deichmanske public library in Oslo. The books will be on display for attendees to view, but not to read. A printing press will be included in the room, to be used in case printing presses cease to exist by 2114.

But Atwood really won't give a hint at what she wrote? "Wild horses would not drag it out of me," she tells The Guardian. "It's part of the contract you can't tell anybody what you're writing. I'm finding it very delicious, because I get to say to people like you [the Guardian], I'm not telling."

But she does offer one nugget of information. "I will say that I've bought some special archival paper, which will not decay in its sealed box over 100 years."




photo: Bjørvika Utviklingay, via The Guardian

Stop cutting cake in wedges and start cutting it length-wise, says British author.

Author Alex Bellos, who writes a math blog for The Guardian, claims that our habit for cutting cake in wedges is scientifically detrimental to the quality of that very cake we eat.

As Bellos explains, he discovered a 1906 letter from British eugenics promoter, Francis Galton, who fancied a new way (albeit from 1906) of cutting cakes to minimize dryness. (Unrelated fun fact: Galton created the term eugenics, as well as the phrase 'nature versus nurture.')

Galton's 108-year old method for preserving moist cake deliciousness? Cut the dessert length-wise down the diameter and push the remaining cake together, sealing it together, thus creating a fairly moderate defense against air attacking exposed sides. After all, wedge slices disallow any chance of shielding the exposed sides from air's destructive force.

Yes, in essence we're talking about cake eugenics.





photo: Su Good Sweets

British columnist: What happened to literary blogging?

"Blogging, I hoped, would prove to be the start of a renaissance in long form critical writing […] Then along came Twitter. And, fairly quickly, that blog article linking to another blogger's excellent article on X, Y or Proust, never came to be written."




So Says Guardian columnist Mark Thwaite.

Still--Proust? Even 140 characters of detailed Proust analysis is sometimes too much.

JRR Tolkien's version of 'Beowulf' to be published for the first time.

Tolkien wrote his own translation of the Old English epic poem back in 1926, but never bothered to have it published. Ninety years later that's about to change, as HarperCollins will publish The Lord of the Rings author's interpretation next month.

HarperCollins won't say how Tolkien approached the debatable beginning of Beowulf. The Old English 'Hwæt'--the very first word in the poem--has varied in translations over the years, from "listen" to "hark," "so" to "behold." How Beowulf should begin is a matter of fierce debate amongst Old English scholars.

What's not debatable? Smaug is just Beowulf's dragon on 'roids. Even the best writers steal borrow.

Three writers who were murdered, two who might have been, and one who just sounds like he was.

Some writers lead fast lives that lead to faster deaths. Addiction to drugs and alcohol is always a popular choice, as is suicide. Tuberculosis has its hand in many an untimely death, and heart attacks is always a consistent bystander.

But murder? Even though it sounds like the clichéd plot to some dime store crime thriller, some writers have met their ends through nefarious means. Here are three writers who were murdered, two who might have been, and one who just sounds like he was.


Three Who Were Murdered:

Sir Thomas More

England's King Henry VIII penchant for killing people close to him is well known. If killing a wife was okay, killing a friend was par for the course, too.

Enter Sir Thomas More, writer of Utopia, Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, and a devout Roman Catholic follower. When the Protestant Reformation began, More sided with the Pope and Rome, believing any deviation from Catholicism to be an act of heresy.

In 1532, More refused to participate in an oath declaring King Henry the Supreme Head of the English Church, which was akin to telling a dictator to take a hike. A year later, More didn't attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as Queen of England--but offered his kind regards for a happy life for the king and queen. Polite "Sorry I can't make the wedding!" cards don't carry the cache you might imagine, so More was in Henry's crosshairs.

Fast-forward through a variety of trumped-up charges (bribery and treason, among others), and More found himself arrested and stuck in the Tower of London. Brought before a panel of judges that included members of Anne Boleyn's family, More still refused to cooperate. He was found guilty under the Treason Act of 1534 and ordered hanged, drawn, and quartered. King Henry reduced the execution sentence to a simple decapitation though, to make things easy on his old friend. Whattaguy!

More took his impending death rather casually, famously telling his executor, "I pray you, I pray you, Mr Lieutenant, see me safe up and for my coming down, I can shift for myself," and that he died as "the king's good servant, but God's first."

Christopher Marlowe

Marlowe always had his detractors. The poor man's Shakespeare--writer of The Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus, among others--was a feisty playwright who always seemed to find himself in the middle of controversy.

This penchant for drama came to a head in 1593 when Marlowe was associated with libelous material about protestants. (Yeah, again with the whole Catholic vs. Protestant angle.) As a Catholic, this wasn't something you wanted to be associated with. He was ordered to appear before authorities regarding the libel claim, but the meetings were delayed.

While staying at a house of a Ms. Eleanor Bull (the equivalent of a modern day B&B), Marlowe allegedly got into an argument with another gentleman, Ingram Frizer, over the bill for staying at Bull's. According to the official report, Marlowe jumped Frizer and hit him on the head while making an attempt for Frizer's dagger. In the ensuing struggle, Frizer, the report claims, stabbed Marlowe above the right eye in self-defense, killing him.

Was it a simple brawl over a B&B bill that did Marlowe in? Scholars can't agree. Theories abound like an Agatha Christie novel that Marlowe was really assassinated on orders by Queen Elizabeth for his libelousness...or by Sir Walter Raleigh's henchmen...or by Sir Robert Cecil's guys because of Marlowe's Catholicism...or a variety of other reasons.

If you're going to die, might as well have at least a dozen people aiming for you.

Federico García Lorca

The Spanish playwright and poet had leftist sympathies, which was a problem when the Spanish Civil War broke out between the Republicans and Nationalists in 1936.

The Nationalists backed General Francisco Franco, a fascist who didn't take kindly to the Spanish republic or anyone of a liberal bent. Lorca was always outspoken about his politics in the years leading up to the war--and when Nationalists gained in popularity, Lorca feared he might be in danger.

On August 18, Lorca's brother-in-law (who was also the mayor of the major city of Granada) was murdered. A day later, August 19, Lorca himself disappeared, believed to be executed, yet no one knows. Much like with Christopher Marlowe, theories abound but facts are scarce. So scarce in Lorca's case, his body has never been found.

In 2009, excavators dug for Lorca's corpse at a spot where a man once claimed to have shoveled a ditch for Lorca after he was shot. No human remains or clues were found by investigators.




Two Who Might Have Been:

Albert Camus

Camus won 1957's Nobel Prize in Literature largely for his work in absurdism.

What isn't absurd? That Camus might have been murdered. (See what I did there? Absurdism/absurd? Ehh? Ehhh?)

The official story is that Camus died in early January 1960 from a car crash. Camus had spent the Christmas holiday in Provence with his wife and kids, but instead of taking the train back to Paris (for which he had already bought a ticket), Camus took his publisher up on the offer to ride with him in his car. They never made it. The publisher's car veered off the icy roads and wrapped itself around a tree. Camus died instantly. The publisher died a few days later.

In 2011, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published a claim from Giovanni Catelli, an Italian academic and poet, who stated Camus was killed by KGB operatives who wanted him dead for his outspoken remarks against the Soviet Union and support of Boris Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago, a book which was banned by Joseph Stalin.

The proof, Catelli claims, comes from a diary passage from Czech poet and translator Jan Zábrana, who allegedly wrote about Camus's death in a book entitled Celý život, but that the passage was deleted in Italian translations of the text.

According to The Guardian:

In the missing paragraph, Zábrana writes: "I heard something very strange from the mouth of a man who knew lots of things and had very informed sources. According to him, the accident that had cost Albert Camus his life in 1960 was organised by Soviet spies. They damaged a tyre on the car using a sophisticated piece of equipment that cut or made a hole in the wheel at speed.

"The order was given personally by [Dmitri Trofimovic] Shepilov [the Soviet foreign minister] as a reaction to an article published in Franc-tireur [a French magazine] in March 1957, in which Camus attacked [Shepilov], naming him explicitly in the events in Hungary." In his piece, Camus had denounced the "Shepilov Massacres" – Moscow's decision to send troops to crush the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

So, a friend of a friend of a friend of a man who knows someone who knows something says Camus was assassinated three years after he insulted the Soviet foreign minister.

And you thought your mom held a grudge.

Pablo Neruda

Continuing with our theme of pissed off governments killing writers, please welcome to the stage Pablo Neruda!

Neruda involved himself in Chilean politics--even more so in Latin American politics as a whole, aligning himself with Marxist movements throughout the region.

By 1970, and riding a tide of popularity, Neruda garnered a nomination for the Chilean presidency. He eventually offered his support for the office to Salvador Allende, who would become the first democratically elected Marxist president in the world. By 1973, all of this would unravel.

Two years earlier, in 1971, Neruda won the Nobel Prize in Literature, bolstering his nation-wide popularity throughout Chile and becoming an international icon. Yet, whereas Neruda was at the height of his popularity, Chile's government was in the gutter. Political bickering was at a boil, leading to a 1973 coup d'état of Allende by fascist General Augusto Pinoche. Being a Marxist, Neruda's popularity didn't reach individuals like Pinochet.

Post-coup, Chilean military searched Neruda's house, but didn't arrest him. Days later, Neruda checked himself into the hospital for prostate cancer treatment. While there, he went into cardiac arrest and died.

In 2013, Neruda's former chauffeur came forward claiming assassins acting on behalf of Pinochet killed the poet while he was receiving treatment in the hospital. Another theory is that former CIA operative Michael Townley killed Neruda, again on orders of Pinochet.

In other words, Pinochet wasn't a fan of Neruda's poetry.



One Who Just Sounds Like He Was:

Dan Andersson

Even if you're an English major, you might not know Dan Andersson. He was a Swedish author and poet who apparently moonlighted as a creepy poser in old photography.

Andersson was visiting Stockholm in 1920 to look into a job at the newspaper Social-Demokraten when he grabbed a room at the Hotel Hellman for his stay while in town.

At the same time, the Hotel Hellman was dutifully killing bedbugs in the hotel with hydrogen cyanide. Because nothing says classy hotel like a joint overrun with a parasitic infestation.

In a surprise to no one, hydrogen cyanide is dangerous, and Andersson's room was doused with it--yet the hotel staff forgot to quarantine the room until the poison dissipated. They sent Andersson up to his room to enjoy his stay, and Andersson's stay was quite brief. By 3pm that day, he was dead from poison.

But, hey, it was bedbug free after all.