Closing tabs

Life reentry day: international travel wreaks havoc with exercise schedule and many other things. Yesterday was extremely demanding, and today I am paying the price!

Closing a few tabs in the meantime:

Brook Stevenson interviews Marlon James (his new book is on a pile here, but it's a tome - might have to buy a copy for Kindle as well, easier to hold while reading!).

David Gordon: doomed to read and write?

Chaucer's advice on how to survive the holidays.

For those who have been demoralized by having a journal reject an article! (And underlying link. This fits closely with my own experience as a referee for journals.)

A short history of the shipping pallet.

Perils of digital preservation.

The rise of livestreaming funerals.

Shane Gould on learning to swim.

Last but not least, Michael Hofmann really didn't like it....

Negative influences

Thomas Mallon and Daniel Mendelsohn on the books they didn't want to write.

Snowpocalypse! My late-afternoon pulmonary function test is canceled (rescheduled for Feb. 4, and not urgent, so that's fine). I am about to gear up and head in to the office to see if I can dig out the folders and files from the last time I taught my graduate seminar on the idea of culture; as always, I am bemoaning my lack of a beautiful filing system in which I would leave each semester's teaching stuff in meticulously organized and easily locatable form!

QTWTAIN

John Rentoul's collection of questions to which the answer is no.