Photographer Michael Lavine’s book, Grunge, chronicles the titular music scene, and he spoke to the Seattle Times about it. (On Kurt Cobain: “He was just a sweet kid, a real friendly guy, nice loving and quiet and shy and funny and interesting. And tired. [laughs] He was tired all the time.”) . . . A funny response to a recent piece about “how to write a great novel.” . . . I’m always drawn to stories about organizing books. Or in this case, culling them: Scott Pack goes from 3,000 to 2,000. . . . Andrew Sullivan’s self-published The View from Your Window, a collection of reader-submitted photos, is now available. . . . I’ve slacked off for a few years now, but I used to be a strict collector of the Best American Short Stories series. C. Max Magee draws out some notable statistics about the series from “a spreadsheet of all the 639 stories that appeared in the collection from 1978 to 2008.” . . . Germaine Greer dismisses Proust, and Guardian readers dismiss Greer: “So reading Proust is a waste of time? And reading an article by Germaine Greer is . . . what exactly? Time well spent?” . . . Mark Athitakis begins to investigate the work of Cyrus Colter (“I was tasked with absorbing lots of ‘celebrate Illinois authors’ material in school, and I don’t recall a single mention of Colter”). . . . Like Fire is holding a contest: Write the best review of a book, new or old, in 25 words or less and win a copy of the new Electric Literature.