Is Superman Circumcised?, which is, in fact, a serious study of the origins of the DC Comics character (subtitle: "The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero"). It won the public vote against five other finalists by 28 percentage points. - The Bookseller (UK)
From one point of view, it’s obvious that, despite exceptions, most stories portray “goody-baddy” dynamics—from nursery rhymes to juicy gossip, from ancient folktales to Holy Scripture, from lowbrow reality shows to award-winning documentaries. The question is, why? - Quillette
Yuri Felsen (né Nikolai Freudenstein), born in St. Petersburg in 1894, fled to Paris after the Revolution and was considered by Russian émigrés to be a near-equal of Nabokov. His first novel, Deceit, published in Russian in 1930; will see print in English next spring. - The Guardian
“My goal in 1982 was justice – not to perpetuate injustice,” she said. “And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine.”- The Guardian
Most of us assumed the dear old mag had shut down forever. In fact, it was only closed from 1969-71, before being relaunched as a quarterly; it's now bimonthly and was overhauled in 2013. Here's an overview of the Post's two centuries. - Columbia Journalism Review
The 1999 memoir, which launched Sebold's career, recounts the rape and beating she suffered at age 18 and Broadwater's subsequent trial and conviction for the crime. Scribner and Sebold will consider how to revise the book before re-releasing it. - Forbes
Tied to both the 2011 revolution and, to a lesser extent, the 1952 military coup that reshaped Egyptian society, the works reflect the ways in which those upheavals affected the imaginative lens through which people relate to themselves and each other. - LitHub
There's no established procedure, alas, so the fate of the archives depends on the particular location and owner. (We're looking at you, News Corp.) But there are some defunct newspapers whose archives have been saved, an excellent example being Denver's Rocky Mountain News. - Tedium
"Vaccine" was the choice because of repeated spikes in traffic: searches of the word this year are up 601% from 2020 and 1,048% over 2019. Also, because of the new mRNA vaccines, the word's definition was expanded. (The runner-up Word of the Year was "insurrection.") - CNN
Returning that much money has been a tricky process, though. Backers have to manually request refunds, so even a week later, tens of millions of dollars are still sitting in ConstitutionDAO’s pockets. - The Verge
It's all about "reward prediction errors" and "the sweet spot between rote and nonsensical." Once you've learned the Swedish for "a clean reindeer" or the Yiddish for "a zebra in a pyramid," you're less likely to forget them. - Slate
NPR's beloved books editor Petra Mayer died a few weeks ago, and so "Books We Love" is named and created "in the spirit of Petra that we don't do best . We do the greatest books for you, whatever you want to read." - NPR
It's not over yet, so perhaps not. "In the hospitals, there has been something like a wartime atmosphere of disaster, but for so many of us, lockdown was a period of waiting. The challenge for writers is to create narrative out of people staying at home." - The Guardian (UK)
They've got a lot in common with Chinese censors, says Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree. "I had written my book to help people, and now it was being held up as derelict and unpatriotic." - The New York Times
