paper trail

Mar 15, 2013 @ 12:03:00 am

Marilyn Monroe, photo by John Florea

Zach Seward explains how Google Reader helps Iranians get around censorship—and why the service’s demise will be catastrophic for reading in Iran.

Don’t date an intern, don’t tell other journalists about your relationship, and don’t get involved with somebody working your beat—Ann Friedman lays out the rules for journalists dating other journalists.

A new literary prize is born: In an announcement this week at the British Library, the UK-based Folio Society broke the news that it would sponsor the Literature Prize, a new $60,000 award dedicated to celebrating “the best English-language fiction from around the world.” The inaugural prize will be presented in March 2014.

Meanwhile, Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng has won the 2012 Man Asian prize for his novel, The Garden of Evening Mists.

And on a related note, this seems like an opportune moment to recommend James English’s The Economy of Prestige, a fascinating account of “the remarkable ascendancy of prizes in literature and the arts.” We’re about a hundred pages in and really enjoying it.

According to a Christie’s auction catalog detailing the contents of Marilyn Monroe’s personal library at the time of her death, the actress was a voracious reader, with a liking for European and mid-century American fiction, psychology, religion, and Russian novels.