Dan Sinykin
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social
former 2x pie-eating champion of St Olaf College
You can/should read Emily Wilson's latest take on the Odyssey, but I'm logging on to convey my hairdresser's reaction. She was AGHAST that Nolan, with his million $ budget, gave Matt Damon ONLY 6 hair extensions. As a result, his hair did not blow around properly, & that ruined the film for her.
“Frog!” cried Toad. “I am sorry for all the dumb things I do. I am sorry for all the silly things that I say. Please be my friend again!”
Perfect first line of a short story: "So I bought a little city (it was Galveston, Texas) and told everybody that nobody had to move, we were going to do it very gradually, very relaxed, no big changes overnight."
It’s syllabus prep season, and I’m thinking about what a privilege and benefit it must be for those academics who get to directly tie their teaching / syllabi to their research / writing. 1/5
For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with clicks through two-factor authentication
US Historian friends: a grad student asked about recent-ish scholarship on the “counter-Enlightenment” in the C18 and early C19 US, and I’m coming up short. Pre-Transcendentalist Rx to Unitarianism, which I can help on. All suggestions welcome!
Friends, my book—No Place for Home: Terror and Race in Literature After 9/11—has a cover! I’m so pleased with what Rachel Moeller and the design team at @uminnpress.bsky.social came up with! The book will be out in Spring 2027 and that I’ll post a pre-order link once it’s available! 1/2
Yiyun Li's a fantastic short story writer. At another level.
🐳 You’re God damned right @hesterblum.bsky.social & I made a TWENTY-FIVE EPISODE PODCAST just about 𝐌𝐎𝐁𝐘-𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐊. Subscribe now at exploringthegreats.com/moby-dick & enjoy our thrilling trailer:
Working on a reported piece, need to know. How long after a book deal happens is it posted on Publishers Marketplace? Is the date posted the date of the deal or the date of the posting?
one of the saddest ironies of higher ed's headlong embrace of AI is that the clearest and most thorough reporting on the subject has been done almost exclusively by student journalists
Sarah Osment@smosment.bsky.social · 6d agothose who work in University writing programs should pay close attention—developing AI-friendly teaching doesn't make you safe from layoff www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
It operates in the same registers of preciousness around the act of writing (which is imaginative and expressive but also economic and industrial) that leads people to insist “oh no, a machine can never write books people will actually want to read” (until they do, suddenly, all across the markets).
Terry Belanger would begin his Rare Book School classes by physically destroying/dismantling a (well-chosen) old book. This is NOT the same as what Anthropic is doing! But there is a popular culture of preciousness around books that is belied by the material realities of their circumstances. +
Daniel Bellingradt@dbellingradt.bsky.social · 7d agoAI companies scanning and shredding old and rare books is bad, but you should be aware that shredding new, old, and used books is an established practice of selling and marketing books. In fact, hundreds of millions of books are shredded every year discretly, and legally, in Europe alone. #booksky
"the potential for profit and celebrity is held out as a carrot to an army of would-be authors, few of whom will ever achieve their aim" ^the description of the market for fiction in...1842 The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
Copyright laws, digital distribution deals, & publishing monopolies are the reason destructive book scanning is putting books at risk. I get why folks are angry at AI companies buying books to destroy them. However, these issues predate them and hang a lot on books being subject to "market forces."
writing is too hard. i should have chosen an easier profession
Tried to prevent a half-billion people from dying by an airborn virus that killed millions anyway and as a reward getting yelled at by 50 guys with the burner FreedomMectinEnemaWarrior1776 under the threat of perjury.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.Ron Johnson claims the the "injection injured" are committing mass suicide
Glen Hansard’s great live cover of my all-time favorite song by anyone, Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks”. Rest In Peace, Glen Hansard. 💚🇮🇪 youtube.com/watch?v=H82p...
Glen Hansard - Astral Weeks - 3/16/2012 - Stage On Sixth, Austin, TX
YouTube video by Paste Magazine
youtube.com
Oh, my God. Nicest guy. Was on the Pogues bill at Carnegie with him. His love of music was palpable, infectious, radiant. I’ve seldom seen a musician as connected to the moment of the song as he was that night, in deep communion with the song & the people playing it. So many felt it. Hard loss.
Stereogum@stereogum.com · last wk.Glen Hansard has died in a motorcycle crash at age 56
Everyman’s stopped printing new titles in the 1970s, as television rather than cheap books became America’s mass market leisure entertainment of choice. (A Novel Marketplace by Evan Brier goes into this period in exquisite detail.) But then …
This is not a question of “shallowgirl readers choosing glitter over literary substance.” It is a question of “publishers are making decisions to try and fill an emptying market niche, and this is the thing they think has the most money in it.” Blame the corporations, not the kids.
A thread on special editions, luxury books, and publishing history: In 1903, J. M. Dent created Everyman’s Library, intended as a cheap line of hardbacks to make a classical education accessible as mass literacy rates were on the rise.
Your favorite romance columnist and author takes a look at romantasy sales, fancy editions, and what it can mean when material forms accompany “taste” (with some book history courtesy of @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social!).
Olivia Waite@oliviawaite.com · last wk.A thread on special editions, luxury books, and publishing history: In 1903, J. M. Dent created Everyman’s Library, intended as a cheap line of hardbacks to make a classical education accessible as mass literacy rates were on the rise.
Know who destroys the most books? Publishers and booksellers. They destroy tens of millions of books each year. There are plenty of good reasons to criticize big tech and gen AI, we should stick to those.
Richard Pace@rpace.bsky.social · last wk.Gen. AI is the tool of the neo-fascists. Anthropic is using "destructive scanning", consuming and destroying books. There is no ethical private AI company or use of its products.
