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From the decade that brought you alternative commentary tracks: Slate offers its first unauthorized museum tour. Download eleven MP3s to your iPod, head for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and follow Lee Siegel's audio guide to the most overrated and underrated paintings in the modern art gallery.

(As it happens, I seem to recall disagreeing with Siegel a lot, but the idea is interesting.)

more book giveaway

Two of my favorite children's books:
Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Two of my favorite science fiction books:
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar

Two literary fiction books I liked:
Donna Tartt, The Little Friend. Just finished this one, about a girl in Mississippi who decides to avenge the dead brother she never knew. I don't finish many 555-page books; it was worth it.
Geoff Ryman, 253. Experimental fiction: 253-word depictions of 252 tube passengers (and the driver) during seven and a half minutes in London. The web version is here.