Linkdump

Some nearly-random links to things that have recently captured my attention for at least a quarter of a second:
A "totally free story" by Joe R. Lansdale

Byzantine Medieval Hypertexts and Slavic Medieval Treasures from Bulgaria (via Languagehat)

On Monday, November 11, The Paris Review will launch a new website and begin offering all of their interviews from the 1950s to the present as free online texts. An explanation and schedule is here. This is phenomenal news, because the Writers at Work books (collections of the interviews) have been out of print for a while, with only some small, thematic selections appearing recently.

The Little Professor reviews the latest Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology. Claude Lalumiere also recently analyzed the book, with somewhat different results. My own feelings about it differ from both -- for instance, Claude doesn't care much for Lucius Shepard's "Only Partly Here" and liked Theodora Goss's "Lily, with Clouds" even less, while those are two of the highlights of the collection for me ("Only Partly Here" is one of the few Shepard stories I have unreserved admiration for). Miriam Burstein (The Little Prof.) considers Peter Crowther's story "Bedfordshire" the best of the anthology, and I have seldom loathed reading a story quite as much as I loathed reading that one. Ah, the joy of a fat anthology -- lots to disagree about!

Jeanette Winterson is going to start selling sandwiches from her home. (viaThe Literary Saloon)

A special issue of the Journal of Improbable Research devoted to cats is now available for downloading as a PDF file.

Food Idiosyncrasies: Beetroot and Asparagus (via Apothocary's Drawer Weblog)

An English-to-Elven Language Translator

Suzette Haden Elgin on archaic English words. Her story "We Have Always Spoken Panglish" is available at SciFiction, and she begins answering questions about it here with a discussion of the need for a U.S. Corps of Linguists. The discussion is still going at her LiveJournal.

And if you like all that, you'll probably like this long list of archaic English words.

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