mike scalise dot net

Its been a while, but here’s the return of links to everything under the sun. Some are old and have nothing to do with DC at all, but just pretend.

The Writer’s Center in Bethesda has a blog now.

Bethanne Patrick over at Author! Author! has chosen Johnathan Miles’ Dear American Airlines as her Book of the Week pick.

WaPo’s Juilet Wittman gives a roundup of recently-released memoirs.

GalleyCat has a quick recap of Opium Magazine’s “Literary Death Match”.

Gene Weingarten discovers that his Pultizer for Originality might be a misnomer.

Lifehacker compiled and ranked reader feedback on “Books That Changed Your Lives.” (Insert Ayn Rand joke here.)

This is a little old, but Dan Zak over at WaPo’s Sunday Source has some thoughts on classic summer reads.

I suggest everyone take a listen to this recent episode of Fresh Air  or watch this video, in which neurologist Jill Bolte Taylor discusses the basis of her new memoir “My Stroke of Insight,” in which she makes herself the subject of an experimental study on strokes. It pretty much blew my mind grapes.

Update: unfortunately, it looks like Olssson’s Books is going belly up.

And finally, from McSweeney’s most recent update on their Dispatches from the Anacostia series:

At 10 minutes before the hour, Elaya calls. She’s running just 10 minutes or so late, and is bringing her “sister” and her “sister”’s 3-month-old baby. “We’ll wait,” I tell her. Ten minutes is no big deal after all these months.

At a quarter past the hour, I am still standing alone outside the Target. On this Memorial Day weekend, the store’s entrance and the sidewalk are crowded with families, workers on cigarette breaks, and a security guard who comes up to me with a big smile.

“You’re still here?” he asks. I shake my head, confused. Still? Fifteen minutes is nothing in the lives of the dispatch kids. Then he realizes he’s mistaken me for another woman, who, earlier, had waited a whopping hour before giving up and going home. I shake my head again. No, that’d never be me.