Web Reads: Mark Twain vs. Jane Austen

Writers’ feud. What did Mark Twain really think of Jane Austen? Emily Auerbach sets out to discover if he genuinely detested her, “or was the bushy-eyebrowed, irascible Twain merely posing?”

Express yourself. Cartoonist Mike Holmes drew cartoons of himself and his cat in the style of other cartoonists and cartoons, including Wallace and Gromit, Berkeley Breathed, Gary Larson, and Bill Watterson. He’s up to 104 “Mikenesses” on his Tumblr site.

E-reading. Oxford University’s Bodleian Library and the Vatican Library have joined together to digitize parts of their collection, including ancient Hebrew texts and 15th century Bibles. Now the Bodleian’s copy of the Gutenberg Bible is available online. The website Openculture.com describes it as a “frighteningly high-resolution cover-to-cover scan of Gutenberg’s original printing.”

Sci-fi insight. Economist Tyler Cowen muses about the politics of science fiction, using as a launching pad an essay from The New Yorker in which Tim Kreider lauds the utopian vision of science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson.

Around the world. When the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was looking for a case study to demonstrate global value chains, it chose Nutella, the hazelnut chocolate spread. Quartz pulls from the report the important stuff, including a map that illustrates the supply chain.