John and Farhana are currently strutting the streets of Lisbon while ballet dancers’ shoes of Veronika and Rory covered Dublin and and Mittleuropean cobble stones
And Munich is awaiting feet of Kev and Jen Jen:
Bloomberg: “The cement, glass and steel that give shape to urban life have also turned modern cities into dangerous heat sinks.
Scorching sunlight gets absorbed, stored and slowly emitted in a bubble of warmth that can push city temperatures as much as 3°C (5.4°F) above the surrounding countryside. This dynamic, combined with the increasingly extreme heat waves produced by climate change, helped drive record-breaking highs in Delhi (49°C) and London (40.2°C) over the past few months. Thousands of city dwellers died in sweltering cities this summer.
But even on the hottest days during what will likely be one of the five hottest years in modern history, there are urban neighborhoods that succeed at blunting climate-driven heat waves. Evidence of these effective solutions capable of saving countless lives can be seen from space. Satellite images produced by the European Space Agency, working in part with data from NASA and the US Geological Survey, now have a high enough resolution to allow for temperature variations to be parsed on a street-by-street level.
These snapshots of heat differences offer clear evidence of cooling strategies that can counteract what researchers term the “urban heat island effect,” in which city temperatures get that extra boost.
The strongest weapon that we have for lowering temperatures are trees, and the best thing we can do for cities are green corridors that connect existing green areas,” says Eleni Myrivili, the city of Athens’ Chief Heat Officer. She will become the United Nations’ Global Heat Officer later this year. “We have to lead with trees to begin with, and then use technology and materials to figure out other ways of cooling spaces,” she says…”
Gordon Burn Prize shortlist
They've announced the shortlist for this year's Gordon Burn Prize, for which works of both fiction and non are eligible.
The winner will be announced 13 October
Esquire lists eighty books it thinks every man should read.
New Helen DeWitt novel coming.
Peter Brook And Richard Taruskin Had A Lot More In Common Than You Could See At First
Charlotte Mandell Q & A
At Famous Writing Routines they have a Q & A with the translator, Interview with Charlotte Mandell.
Among her responses:
If you could give just one piece of advice to someone trying to get into the translation field, what would it be ?Which sounds like good advice for everyone, not just those interested in getting into the translation field ...
Read as much as you can, in any language you know (and in some you don't).
At the Literary Hub they now have their Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2022, Part Two -- the 230 'most anticipated' books of the second half of the year.
Certainly quite a few titles of interest here, and the list covers the big titles -- but there's a lot more to look forward to, so continue to keep your eyes peeled .....
Middle Class Sour Dough parody:
The New Yorker And The Archivist It Just Fired Are Trading Insults On Twitter
Police Warn Of “People Pretending To Play The Violin
Mori Ōgai profile
At nippon.com Ōtsuka Miho has a profile of Mori Ōgai: The Polymath Intellectual Who Made Literary History.
Only one of his works is under review at the complete review, The Wild Geese.
How do you organize your books? 9 authors share their favorite shelves.
Washington Post – “I asked nine writers to share a photo of a favorite bookshelf (or what social media might refer to as a “shelfie”), explain the organizing principle (if there is one) and tell me a bit about what’s on that shelf. Here’s what they said. Shelfies by Elin Hilderbrand, Diana Gabaldon, Garrett Graff, Vanessa Riley, Emma Straub, Hernan Diaz, Jennifer Weiner, Chris Bohjalian and Christopher Buckley.”
