Kingsley Amis was a prominent figure in English letters from the mid 1950s on, but whether this was because his clubbable personality automatically attracted publicity or because there was enduring worth in his books is more difficult to answer; hence my use of ‘prominent’ rather than ‘significant’. Zachary Leader is in no doubt that Amis was a major literary figure and makes extraordinary and, I submit, exaggerated claims for his importance. Let me attempt a judicious summing-up. Amis was a good minor poet in the Robert Graves tradition (Graves was one of his heroes), a writer who insisted on precise craftsmanship and lucid meanings in verse; he had no time for the elaborate symbolic apparatuses of W B Yeats, T S Eliot, Wallace Stevens et al — authors whose work often does require a concordance before one can understand it. He was a good minor comic novelist, not in the class of Evelyn Waugh or P G Wodehouse or even, for my money, Peter de Vries; but there is no denying that Amis could often be extremely funny. He was an essayist of high talent, though again not quite in the premier division with the likes of Gore Vidal. And by all accounts he was a brilliant mimic, a superb raconteur and a sparkling conversationalist. Not a bad man, then, to have as a dinner-table companion. But is he important enough to warrant a 900-page biography? Certainly not.

more from Literary Review here.

DESCENDING TO THE BASEMENT of the Schaulager—Herzog & de Meuron’s sand-encrusted bunker with its slashing gash of a window—one was beset by a sound that seemed oddly antique, like that of typewriter keys or rotary phone dials: the whir and clatter of a film projector. It was apparent in that sound, now threatened with obsolescence, that Tacita Dean’s retrospective (organized by Theodora Vischer) was called “Analogue” for both polemical and nostalgic reasons. “Analogue, it seems, is a description,” the artist writes in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, “a description, in fact, of all things I hold dear.” Dean’s fidelity to 16-mm film and its bulky, outmoded apparatus, as digital technology quickly renders them obsolete, defines her art and her outlook; the materiality of the medium seems a bulwark against a fast-advancing future where imagery is insubstantial, endlessly transmutable, there but not there. Dean is no loon or Luddite in her lost-cause allegiance to celluloid. As the poet of imperiled sites, abandoned dwellings, defunct technology, and architectural relics, she is at once an English romantic, an aesthetic descendant of Turner, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Michael Powell, and a recalcitrant materialist. She adheres to the concrete and quantifiable even as her artworks often proceed from found objects, chance events, and coincidences, and her films rely on evanescent, unpredictable nature for their mysterious beauty—twilight skies tinted mint, rose, peach, and darkling purple (Boots, 2003; Fernsehturm, 2001); blackbirds gathering to ominous mass in the dusk (Pie, 2003); a triptych of grass, trees, and sky invaded by lowing cows (Baobab, 2002); seascapes roiling and becalmed (Bubble House, 1999; Sound Mirrors, 1999); late afternoon light glowing molten on glass or burnished wood (Fernsehturm; Boots; Palast, 2004).

more from Artforum here.

People likened Thomas to a Wild West newsman, an X-rated Walter Winchell, a blues lyricist. In later years he was also called an ancestor of gangsta rap. But he considered himself none of these things—in his own eyes he was a crusader against crime, an exposer of wrongdoing, and he had absolute confidence in the righteousness of every word that he wrote. His persona in print was that of a hanging judge; he thought of his paper as a public service. But the man also liked to sell newspapers. At its peak in the 1970s it had newsstand sales of 50,000. Thomas relied not on advertising but on circulation—the popular vote—and at a time when black business success came rarely, people around St. Louis referred to the editor as a “black millionaire.”

more from The Believer here.

From Guardian:

John Lloyd and John Mitchinson are the authors of The Book of General Ignorance. It is based on the hit BBC2 TV show QI (short for Quite Interesting), starring Stephen Fry and Alan Davies.

4. Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang by Jonathan Green
To finally kill off Johnson’s ‘harmless drudge’ calumny, here is a modern dictionary that is the work of a real human being. Green’s book goes further, deeper and wider than any other record of slang and manages to combine unimpeachable historical scholarship with the appropriate wit and raciness. (apparently ‘gooseberry bush’ was a 19th century euphemism for pubic hair). The OED of the street.

5. Labyrinths of Reason by William Poundstone
Subtitled ‘Paradoxes, Puzzles and the Frailty of Knowledge’, this is a profound and endlessly fascinating collection of philosophical experiments that leave the reader unable to settle back into old and lazy ways of thinking. Poundstone is a sceptic in the richest sense of the term and whether he’s writing on Sherlock Holmes or parallel worlds, his writing remains sparklingly clear and accessible. Dental floss for the brain.

6. Thought As A System by David Bohm
Another mind-expanding book about thinking. Bohm was a leading quantum physicist and worked on the Manhattan project. He became a close friend of the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti and this book is a record of Bohm’s seminars where he reviewed their work together. It is a genuinely visionary meeting of east and west and of philosophy with spirituality and politics. Anyone who worries about our future needs to read it.

More here.

From MSNBC:

Bird brained they might be, but crows are the MacGyvers of the avian world, able to turn twigs and even their own feathers into tools for getting at hard-to-reach food. But while young crows are born with a propensity for crafting tools, it’s only after watching their elders make and use tools that they become truly proficient, a new study suggests.

Compared to other crows, those from the Pacific island of New Caledonia, located east of Australia, are master tool makers and users, second only to humans and on level with chimps when it comes to finding novel uses for everyday objects. In their natural forest environment, the midnight-black birds fashion twigs, leaves and even their own feathers into tools for rooting out insects in dead wood.

The crows craft tools to specific needs. They examine a problem and then pick or design an appropriate tool. For example, faced with a snack lodged in a small tree hole, a crow will prune and adjust a leafy oak branch to just the right width to poke into the hole.

More here.