-
Recent Posts
- Favorite books from 2011
- Tell me why to finish that novel
- How to Read Literature Like a Thirsty Linguist (I)
- Who owns birdness?
- Interview with Anna North, author of America Pacifica
- Kay Rosen’s linguisticky art
- Book review: The Emperor of All Maladies
- Creative scientific methods (with movie stars!)
- How to become a vampire
- The Pulitzer Prize for Hypertext
Subscribe via RSS
-
Join 17 other subscribers
Author Archives: annepycha
Favorite books from 2011
I read many books this year. They served as solace when I was feeling blue. Here are my top ten, in no order: The Submission, Amy Waldman A jury selects an anonymous winner for a 9/11 memorial competition. It turns … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
Tell me why to finish that novel
(Second in the series, How to read literature like a thirsty linguist). At my old book club in California, we did alright for ourselves. We met once a month. We didn’t gossip. We actually discussed characters and plots. But we … Continue reading
Posted in Novels and literature
Tagged book club, Elif Batuman, Kars, Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk, Snow
1 Comment
How to Read Literature Like a Thirsty Linguist (I)
I wanted to spice things up at book club. So I picked up (er, downloaded) a copy of How to Read Literature Like a Professor (2003). In it, Thomas C. Foster, a professor at the University of Michigan, Flint, gives … Continue reading
Who owns birdness?
I grew up in the city. As far as animals go, I prefer not to get too close. Still, I remember the thrill of spotting a flock of parrots perched in a tree on the south side of Chicago. Originally … Continue reading
Posted in Linguistics and science, Scientific methods
Tagged archaeopteryx, birds, Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Naming Nature, taxonomy
4 Comments
Interview with Anna North, author of America Pacifica
“The trouble started when the woman with the shaking hands came to the apartment,” begins Anna North’s new novel, America Pacifica. Darcy, who answers the door, is an eighteen-year-old struggling to survive with her mother, Sarah, on a remote Pacific … Continue reading
Posted in Novels and literature
Tagged America Pacifica, Anna North, climate change, dystopia, ice age
2 Comments
Kay Rosen’s linguisticky art
Does text have a proper place in serious art? In Kay Rosen’s work, that question becomes moot because the text is the art. In these small pieces on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, juxtapositions of words and letters … Continue reading
Book review: The Emperor of All Maladies
Why read a 571-page book about cancer? Two reasons. First, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Scribner, 2010) takes the reader back in scientific time, in a way that’s actually convincing. With well-chosen words, author Siddhartha Mukherjee … Continue reading
Posted in Disease, Scientific methods
Tagged bacteria, biography, Bruce Ames, cancer, carcinogens, leukemia, mutagens, scientific method, Siddhartha Mukherjee, tobacco
Leave a comment
Creative scientific methods (with movie stars!)
As laypeople who read about science in newspapers and blogs, we’re often interested in results. Did the mice develop cancer? Sometimes, though, it’s not the results which offer the most food for thought, but the methods. How do you make … Continue reading
Posted in Scientific methods
Tagged actors, gustaf bruze, marriage, movie stars, scientific method
Leave a comment
How to become a vampire
“There’s no literary term for the quality Twilight and Harry Potter (and The Lord of the Rings) share,” wrote Lev Grossman of Time magazine in 2008, “but you know it when you see it: their worlds have a freestanding internal … Continue reading
The Pulitzer Prize for Hypertext
Each year, the Pulitzer Prize committee supposedly bestows an award for distinguished fiction that deals with American life. But to my mind, this year’s committee bestowed an award for distinguished hypertext that demonstrates why we must read fiction in the … Continue reading
Thirsty Linguist 