Random

Citizen Reader is hosting a book menages comparing two types of short written works, essays and short stories, using recent efforts of George Saunders and Steven Millhauser as the basis for discussion. Check it out.

Have you read Simon Johnson's piece on the financial industries capture of the US government? Not the happiest of reads, but well worth it. Then follow it up with "My Manhattan Project" an essay from the man who wrote the code that allowed these jackasses to wreck the world economy.

Here is a fun post from Short Stack about the notion (and books that argue a viewpoint) of identifying a year in which everything changed.

Stereogum lists and comments on the Amazon top 100 indie albums of all time. Number one is Bee Thousand, which I like for the hits rather than for the whole album. Still those hits are quite something as in Hot Freaks (scroll down), Tractor Rape Chain and Buzzards and Dreadful Crows.