Cheaters & Rereaders

Oh, Hestia. Thanks for setting such a strong literary precedent, and for inspiring this line: “But after he ate his first wife, she had figured Zeus’s womanizing would calm down.” Who doesn’t love a good cheater every now and then? Or, as Leah McLaren puts it, in the Globe, “To speak of ‘the literature of adultery’ is to speak of literature itself.”

A gift guide to some of Canada’s most underrated reads, including Hazlitt contributor Christine Pountney’s Sweet Jesus. And, some book designers on their favourite covers of 2012—with a shout out to Hazlitt’s own C.S. Richardson.

If you’re in the mood for a no-reason—or is it just-because?—slide show, here’s one with nine photos of Mark Twain. Alternatively, you might better enjoy a poem from Eileen Myles, recited, apparently, by a puppet.

And while this isn’t a new essay, Iain Reid’s treatise on rereading was recently brought to my attention once again. So I reread it, and the piece is, as you might expect, just as heartening the second time around.