Wired has an unusual “experiment” going on: a profile of a profile of Charlie Kaufman. It’s basically a blow-by-blow of how a magazine feature makes it from pitch to page. A Charlie Kaufman profile is obviously an interesting choice for this—like one of his films, there’s no telling which way it might go. (via)

Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, lists his forty favorite books and explains his choices in the London Times:

Choosing 40 books, however, is a different matter. That is not as much as 400 or 4,000, to be sure, but it’s enough to let you establish a sort of settled personal canon ... or is it? Because it would be quite easy to choose 40 poets, as I very soon realised. Or 40 19th-century novels. Or 40 books about science. Or 40 books about great painters, lavishly illustrated. Damn! I wanted them all! What should be my principle here?

Well, it had to be variety, of course. I also thought I should avoid too many obvious classics. Was there much point in recommending Middlemarch or Hamlet? I thought that people could be trusted to find their way to those without my help. Another constraint was that the books had to be in print, which ruled out any of the 16 novels of the, to my mind, inexplicably forgotten writer Macdonald Harris, an American who died in 1993, and whose The Balloonist, at least, should be available.

Personally, Middlemarch would make my list despite its obviousness. But I admit I would never have thought of The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh.

Slate recommends companion reading for the Republican National Convention. I heartily second their recommendation of Robert Timberg’s The Nightingale’s Song, which follows not only John McCain but John Poindexter, Bud McFarlane, Jim Webb, and Oliver North. A fascinating and well-written book.

And given the circumstances, I’d like to add a book to Slate’s list: Douglas Brinkley’s account of Hurricane Katrina, The Great Deluge.

Peter Austin, author of One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost, lists the top ten endangered languages in the Guardian. Many of the languages on the list are not related to any known language and have very complicated syntaxes and grammars. For example, take Yuchi (spoken in Oklahoma by five people all older than 75):

Yuchi nouns have 10 genders, indicated by word endings: six for Yuchi people (depending on kinship relations to the person speaking), one for non-Yuchis and animals, and three for inanimate objects (horizontal, vertical, and round).

Guugu Yimidhirr, an Australian aboriginal language, also sounds pretty complex:

Guugu Yimidhirr (like some other Aboriginal languages) is remarkable for having a special way of speaking to certain family members (like a man’s father-in-law or brother-in-law) in which everyday words are replaced by completely different special vocabulary. For example, instead of saying bama dhaday for “the man is going” you must say yambaal bali when speaking to these relatives as a mark of respect and politeness.

(But we all know one word of Guugu Yimidhirr: kangaroo.)

The Boston Globe lists the top ten New England literary journals, two of which (Ploughshares and Redivider) originate at Emerson College.

If you’re among those who can hardly stand the wait for the next Neal Stephenson, Anathem, BoingBoing has an amuse bouche for you: the glossary.

A book called The Difficulty of Being a Dog inspired an intriguing write-up at Vulpes Libris, along with a roundup of favorite dog books from the rest of the team. 

If you think there’s no better smell on earth than the smell of a used bookstore, you’ll want to read this Paper Cuts post from Dwight Garner.

Louis Bayard draws an interesting line between two new books, The Man Who Made Vermeers and Can You Ever Forgive Me?, and poses the question Can great art spring from a lie?

Porches and Stoops:

Magnum presents portraits of the people and animals who sit on their front porches and stoops watching the world go by.

In his post Harlan Ellison Has Just About Had it With Kids These Days, Mark Athitakis expands a little on a subject that comes up repeatedly around these parts, namely being a teacher of today’s students. The Ellison interview that prompted the post is here.

Fantastically geeky piece by Gregory Cowles on Paper Cuts today, about some Times staffers playing a game of Dictionary with Ammon Shea (Reading the OED) and his lexicographer girlfriend. I particularly love the aside about how the couple met:

I asked him how an avid dictionary reader comes to date a former lexicographer, and he told me he’d been hired to move her furniture. While he was in her apartment, her little dog kept barking until the lexicographer said, “Hush, Pumpernickel!” Shea couldn’t contain himself: “Do you know the etymology of ‘pumpernickel’?” he asked. “As a matter of fact, I do,” she replied. (The German is, roughly: flatulent goblin.)

Fate’s hand at work.

If it would surprise you to see “David Brooks” and “hilarious” in the same sentence, you’ll want to read his mock advice column on how to be a successful pseudo-intellectual in the age of the iPhone.

Amusing bit by Barry Gewen at Paper Cuts on the State Department’s recommended reading list for employees: “Even the most ‘self-directed’ professionals may not be counting the hours till their book club gets around to ‘Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the United States Information Agency.’”

Wyatt Mason begins his latest Harper’s post, Enthusiasm is suspicious. Or so a critic sometimes feels. I’m not a critic but am often on the reader’s side of that equation — as I think we all are. When there’s an excess of gushing about a book (movie, etc), either from the media or from readers here in the ’ville, I get rubbed the wrong way by it. And yet, at the same time, it’s not that I think anyone is overstating their ardor. How do you account for it?