The hero of a kids’ book doesn’t usually die. In Choose Your Own Adventure books, a children’s series that has sold more than 270m copies and been translated into 40 languages since its launch in 1979, the hero dies multiple times, in unpleasant, unexpected and often grotesque ways. And that hero happens to be You.
You, the reader, addressed in the second person, make choices every few pages, to find out who killed Harlowe Thrombey, to seek the lost jewels of Nabooti, uncover the secret of the pyramids, or escape being a prisoner of the Ant People. And while some endings can be deemed happy, in most scenarios you end up dead. You can get eaten by insects, rodents, goblins or intergalactic meatpackers. Stabbed by ghosts, lanced by knights, or executed by gangsters. You fall down mineshafts, off cliffs, into wormholes, and perish in every conceivable natural catastrophe.
My husband reads to me every night before we go to sleep. We deliberately choose books that are familiar – oft-read children's classics make frequent appearances – so I do not worry about missing something important when I drift off. I have noticed that after some time – it can be as little as a few minutes if I am especially tired – the meanings of the words are gradually eclipsed by the sounds. I begin to hear sounds and rhythms instead of words and story. The waxing and waning of the accents and stress patterns become a calming, lulling, treasured experience that soothes and resets me after a long day.
Scientists have discovered new evidence that the universe was briefly governed by different physical laws than it is today, producing a violation to which we owe our very existence, reports a new study.
The results open a window into the mysterious epoch of inflation, an ultrashort period when the universe expanded exponentially fractions of a second after the Big Bang.
“Hell hath no fury like the citizens of a country who hold a ‘bird of the year’ contest,” quipped Auckland scientist Catherine Qualtrough – and the country does have an internationally unusual focus and dedication to its winged creatures. That love has shaped its national identity and conservation agenda and launched an enormous country-wide campaign to wipe out animals that threaten the avian population.
“You know what you know,” says Andrew Digby, a science adviser at the Department of Conservation – and what New Zealand knows is birds. The country is one of only a handful of places around the world that have no native terrestrial mammals.
But Gout’s novel is about much more than a confrontation between the obviously good and the obviously evil; it is a story concerned with historical trauma and the systemic violence that it spawns. It also encourages us to ask uncomfortable questions. How much are we willing to sympathize with those who have been victimized but are now victimizing others? Is it possible to take moral revenge against systemic violence? Piñata may fundamentally be a mythic horror story about a group of people trying to stop vengeful spirits from destroying the world, but the horror is more often brutally real than fantastical. In fact, Piñata begins with the end of a world—all the more tragic because it actually happened.
Samantha Irby dedicates her new book to Zoloft. It’s a fitting tribute. In “Quietly Hostile,” the author-comedian delivers 17 essays that explore — with lacerating humor — some sensitive subjects, including her depression.
Outside, the swarm. The dog found it first,
ran crying, and now we’re both wearing balaclavas
in July. You in mittens, two sweatshirts, some Oakleys
from God knows where, hands up against the sliding glass.