Arts
BOOKED SOLID: Eliminating distractions
By Lucy Randall | May 27, 2009Courtesy of Amazon.com Look around this campus, and you'll see legions of the constantly distracted.
Lucy Randall
Arts
BOOKED SOLID: Becoming Steve Martin
By Lucy Randall | May 21, 2009Although it kills me to say it, I have to admit that the book I read this week, John Haskell's "Out of My Skin," was very postmodern.
Arts
BOOKED SOLID: Stressed? Just reach for a cold one
By Lucy Randall | May 13, 2009Even during the Bacchic frenzy that is Green Key, the average Dartmouth partygoer would admit that he or she considers beer -- especially of the Keystone variety -- as more of a vehicle than a destination. If I got one thing out of reading Tom Robbins' latest book, the strange amalgam of a public-service announcement and marketing strategy gone dreadfully awry titled "B is for Beer," it's that we're not doing anything wrong if we only think of brewskis as a means to an end.
Arts
BOOKED SOLID: New novel explores the coded messages written into lyrics
By Lucy Randall | May 7, 2009We listen to music while we walk to class, from personal playlists streaming through headphones or the bells of Baker Tower.
Arts
BOOKED SOLID: Mystery and sex on the Broadway express
By Lucy Randall | April 30, 2009Courtesy of Farrar, Straus & Giroux If you've frequented the New York City subway system, chances are you may have met some interesting fellow riders.
Arts
BOOKED SOLID: Zombies terrorize in Austen comedy of manners
By Lucy Randall | April 23, 2009Zombies dressed in empire-waisted gowns and riding pants are attacking bookstores everywhere, and they're hungry for young brains. A fixture on The New York Times' paperback trade fiction bestseller list for the last two weeks, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith's "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance -- Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!" (Quirk 2009), transports us to 19th century England, where life is just like a scene from America's favorite BBC mini-series starring Colin Firth, except for one small detail: a plague of zombies has overtaken the country.
Arts
BOOKED SOLID: Author argues against the conventional view of intelligence and genetics
By Lucy Randall | April 16, 2009The other day in Collis, I overheard someone who appeared to be a Dartmouth admissions officer talking with a visiting high school student and her mother.
Arts
BOOKED SOLID: Romantic self-help book offers fairy tale lessons
By Lucy Randall | April 9, 2009Courtesy of Simon & Schuster At my lovely editor's behest, I read something I probably wouldn't have chosen on my own this week.
Arts
BOOKED SOLID: Art and evolution
By Lucy Randall | April 2, 2009Courtesy of theartinstinct.com After the blissful mind rot of spring break, I jolted my brain back into shape with a great, informative read this week that will please both the art snobs and bio nerds among us: "The Art Instinct" (Bloomsbury 2009) provides ample cocktail party conversation fodder for the right-brained and left-brained alike. In his new book, Denis Dutton, co-founder and editor of the go-to humanities web site Arts & Letters Daily, takes an innovative approach to aesthetics, demonstrating that the human desire for beauty is an innate trait that has evolved in us over thousands of generations. Laying the groundwork for his theory in terms of Darwinian principles and basic aesthetic philosophy from Hume and Kant, Dutton forges on to explain that "the art instinct" is a by-product of adaptations that are crucial for human survival. In doing so, Dutton undertakes the seemingly impossible task of proving that artistic taste -- that set of convictions, which seems to many of us to be the very definition of subjectivity -- is as pre-programmed as any other element of our genetic code. Dutton's book abounds with examples from other researchers who have studied the arts around the world.
Arts
BOOKED SOLID: New book offers a guide to 'Saving the World'
By Lucy Randall | March 4, 2009It must be nice to have it all figured out. In his new book, "Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference" (2008), business lecturer and former Yahoo chief solutions officer Tim Sanders proposes a "Responsibility Revolution" that he claims will not only cure our environmental ills, but make us better workers, better citizens and happier people. A complete overhaul of the corrupt, cynical and unsustainable status quo will be ours if we see the revolution through the five phases Sanders identifies, he claims. Afterwards, "Social responsibility will be the new king.