Why we love to watch people (or robots) doing the robot.

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If you believe in kindness, you’ll be free. That’s the attitude blogger Dig This Chick had to take after a domain squatter bought up her blog domain and tried to sell it back to her.

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Playboy has 383,049 followers on Twitter. Ms.needs your help to catch up. Follow @msmagazine and tell your friends to do the same!

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What are the consequences, if any, of stopping reading?

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Advice for indie bookstores: Amazon isn’t really your enemy, and poetry readers may be your best friends.

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Why do some neighborhoods get overrun with chain stores, while others don’t?

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“Sea Trees would be big, lush, tiered towers that rise up offshore, whether in a lake, a river, or the sea, and create floating preserves for plants and animals,” reports Fast Company. “Think of them as elaborate city parks (except humans aren’t allowed).”

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When the First Lady comes to your restaurant, what’s a young cook to do?

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The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight.

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The best pen pal ever: Sign up for Letters in the Mail and get letters, in the mail, from your favorite author.

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Infographic: Get enough sleep or else you’ll be dumber, get fatter, die sooner, be meaner, and get lucky less often.

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Fatherly advice from John Steinbeck to his son, on the beautiful complexities of love.

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“Madame Tussauds is like a safari, only it’s celebrity you’re stalking, and about halfway through you begin to feel more hunted than hunter.” Prospect magazine uncovers the secret behind the success of wax museums.

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How many of us have threatened to give up the rat race and live simply in a cabin in the woods? This guy actually did it.

Image by Victoria, licensed under Creative Commons. 

In theory, I love the idea of the newly debuted Man Cave. Hosted by Adams Media, it’s  an online bookstore targeted directly at male readers and those who buy gifts for them, according to Publishers Weekly. How perfect! I’m always looking for great book ideas for my husband, who isn’t a big reader but can be drawn in by a combination of good writing and a nice manly topic like roughing it in the wild.

“Men tend to be the most challenging people to shop for,” says an Adams Media marketer. And the Man Cave site boasts of having the solution: “Yes, guys do read—they like it, in fact. It’s here that you’ll find the perfect gift for the man in your life.” But check out the selection of titles: How Do You Light a Fart?, 100 Sexiest Women in Comics, and Sweet ’Stache: 50 Badass Mustaches and the Faces Who Sport Them, to name just a few.

Ahh, so they didn’t mean literary novels and memoirs that might appeal to not-big-reader guys. They meant gifty books that nobody really wants but that are stamped “For Guys.” Books about farts and mustaches. You know, the book equivalent of a tie printed with golf tees.

I’d love to see a Man Cave bookstore that features post-apocalyptic tales like George Saunders’ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Or books that explore the physical and emotional terrain of the Western mountains, such as Pete Fromm’s Indian Creek Chronicles and James Galvin’s The Meadow. Perhaps some classics like Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki. (See also All the President’s Books.)

Please add your title suggestions below. We can build our own literary Man Cave, Utne Reader style.

Source: Publishers Weekly 

Image by Martin Cathrae, licensed under Creative Commons.