Ghosts, Board Games, Satire, Julian Assange, Henry James
We Salted Nannie
Tom Maxwell | Bitter Southerner | 23rd October 2016
A “real-life” Southern ghost story, says the author. Which is not quite the same thing as “true”, arguably, but all the same, a heck of a tale. “Nine months in, exhausted and traumatised by the house, we decided to break the lease. By this time, we had a list of nicknames for our tormentors: Smokey, Spaghetti Arms, The Spook Parade, Bonnet Lady, Smiley, Buckskin Man, Kitchen Lady, The Upstairs Thing. We had become chattel, split off and preyed upon by the true inhabitants of that place” (6,700 words)
Best New Board Games
Tom Mendelsohn | Ars Technica | 22nd October 2016
Report from the Internationale Spieltage — the board-gamers’ Comic Con — in Essen. Top pick: A Feast For Odin, by Uwe Rosenberg, which “plays like a total Norse conquest simulator, with hundreds of components and several trees’ worth of cards and cardboard in each box. Players hunt, harvest, mine, refine, and build up their home islands before constructing ships, going a-raiding and stripping the mainland of all of its loot.” Even the solo game is said to be “deeply satisfying” (3,900 words)
Congratulations! Your Essay Has Been Accepted!
Aaron Guest | McSweeney's | 23rd October 2016
Satire. But only just. “Dear Mr. Guest: Thank you for your recent submission, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Paying Off My Student Loan Debt,” to Navient’s Loan Repayment Success Story Quarterly. We read it with great interest! We are excited to present it to our student loan borrowers! We know it will encourage the many thousands of borrowers to give us the money they owe in a more timely manner! As you know, repaying your Student Loan Debt is an achievement worth sharing!” (825 words)
The Paranoid World Of Julian Assange
James Ball | Buzzfeed | 23rd October 2016
Former Wikileaks insider speculates how Assange is holding up after four years in hiding — during which Assange has morphed from an icon of the left to a “darling of the alt-right”, mainly for his attempts to undermine Hillary Clinton, whom he views as a personal enemy. “If Putin came and gave him a set of orders, they’d be ignored. But if an anonymous or pseudonymous group came offering anti-Clinton leaks, they’d find a host happy not to ask too many awkward questions” (3,060 words)
A Week In October
Henry James | New York Review of Books | 23rd October 2016
Seasonal extract from a century-old literary almanac, The Daily Henry James: A Year of Quotes. “The apple tree in New England plays the part of the olive in Italy, charges itself with the effect of detail, for the most part otherwise too scantly produced, and, engaged in this charming care, becomes infinitely decorative and delicate. What it must do for the too under-dressed land in May and June is easily supposable; but its office in the early autumn is to scatter coral and gold” (770 words)
Video of the day: Marcus Du Sautoy: Shakespeare’s Numbers
What to expect:
Bad Shakespearean things often come in threes — like the Three Witches (1’44”)
Thought for the day
Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not
Flannery O'Connor