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Sign of the 'Times'

Personal Days is a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.

(Read the full NYT coverage here.)

Mimesis

He likes (though that hardly seems the right word) to write virtually interminable sentences—as if a period would bring the reader unearned relief from the mimetic pain he ought to be suffering. —Frank Kermode on Harold Brodkey, NYT (Sept. 18, 1988)

You could watch a lot of movies

AM New York has a column called Extreme Commuter. From this week's edition:

For more than two years, Combs has taken a bus, the No. 7 train and a Metro-North train to get to and from work. She leaves her home at 6:45 a.m. to get into work at 9:15 a.m., and then leaves the office at 6:30 p.m. to return home at 9 p.m.

Great story—but a PD spoiler!

EP says: "Don't click on this story until you've finished the book!"

(From Jordan)

(Seriously, don't click unless you've finished!)

O, Siberia!

[T]oday I got a work-related e-mail in which the last (unrelated) line read, "By the way, [boss' boss] tells me you're moving to another building soon!" Uh, thanks for letting me know, guys? I will try and forget about the book I just read in which soon-to-be-laid-off employees were first moved to a near-empty floor where no one would visit them. —From a LiveJournal entry

No snooze is...good snooze?

Alice Wang's Sleep Inventions.

"...a reverse alarm clock to be programmed for how long you want to sleep instead of when you want to wake up. Keeping with her ideas on sleeping and waking, Wang has come up with a Tyrant alarm clock, which steals your mobile phone and makes random calls every three minutes until you get up..."

(Via Jen)