We look forward to our weekly issues of the Powell’s newsletter — we cannot help but be entranced by the journeys and trials of Fup, Store Cat. No, we don’t immediately scroll down to the latest installment…sometimes we stop and read the other stuff, too. Like this article, which begins in such a lovely, self-effacing manner: I may look like your normal bookstore employee — facial stubble, nerd glasses, untucked shirt, jeans, scuffed shoes, the little red sticker that says “INFO” on it — but I do much more than serve customers and shelve books here at Powell’s. I get

There is something wrong with this world. Or maybe there’s something wrong with Newsweek. Possibly both. We were fascinated by their coverage of the Japanese trend of blogs-to-novels (or as we like to think about them: True Confessions, blog style) right up until the moment that we finished the article and allowed our roving eye to latch upon the next short item. Tom Perkins, ex of Danielle Steel, had an idea for a novel. Wait, we must begin at beginning. Tom Perkins was invited to participate in a reality show (something like Who Wants to Marry a Billionaire). It all

We cannot pinpoint the source of our excitement, but this story about The New Yorker’s “spots” piqued our interest. Hmm, much in the way that series of coffee commercials, when we realized it was a series, made us look more closely at the television (we got over this). Perhaps it is the sense that you’ve caught the inside joke before anyone else. Because, after all, how many people the New York Times? Ten? Twenty? Now all we have to do is slip another magazine into our teetering pile without the husband noticing (apparently we’re “cutting back” — we have no

We have long held a theory we call the Cookie Jar Effect. Quite simply, it is that people want what they are told they cannot have. There are many corollaries to this theory, including the one that suggests opposition increases revenue. People are more likely to try to read, watch, or hear art that someone feels is offensive. Our more cynical side often thinks such controversies are nurtured by the artists, but that may be because we have so little faith in the kindness of strangers. Maybe this is why we immediately wonder if Chinese censors are secretly working for

There is a writing exercise — we’re sure you’ve all played along — where the class is given three items and instructed to construct a story (or at least a paragraph) including all items. The last time we participated in this, there were exploding fish and dead bodies. And those weren’t even on the list of three items. Naturally, the point of the exercise is to illustrate that authors, even when given the same elements, will construct vastly different scenarios. Let us take a moment to admire the human brain. Surely a weirder creation has never been invented. This was