Poetry | The ballad Of Steinbjørn JacobsenA poet from the Faroe Islands tours the US with a State Department interpreter. Lacking a common language they develop a creole of Faroese, Swedish and Danish. All things considered, the trip goes well save for the poet’s habitual breakfast — a bottle of whisky. “This was quite refreshing”, says an American professor as they depart. “I teach folklore — but I almost never come into any living, breathing contact with it.” (Eric Wilson, Lithub, 7,200 words)  Music | Dylan goes electricDiscussion of recent books about Bob Dylan and music piracy. Dylan’s electric show at the Newport Festival in 1965 put an end to the folk revival and invented modern rock. The years that Dylan then spent jamming with The Band in Woodstock inadvertently revolutionised music a second time. Out-takes from the sessions were made into the first-ever bootleg LP, The Great White Wonder, launching the pirate onslaught that would change the music industry in decades to come even more than Dylan had changed music itself. (Robert Loss, LA Review of Books, 3,842 words)  Books | The crisis in non-fictionGeneral publishers have lost their appetite for serious non-fiction, save for potential blockbusters. They want “talking-point books” which take a seductive idea and attach a string of anecdotes to it; Malcolm Gladwell is the genre’s patron saint. Happily, this ‘crisis’ has already found a solution. Serious non-fiction has migrated to the university presses. Yale has the best non-fiction list in the world right now. (Sam Leith, Guardian, 1,280 words)  Music | Ghosts and grace of Nina SimoneNina Simone trained from infancy as a classical pianist, made Juilliard, dreamed of Carnegie Hall. Instead she played bars, perfected one of the century’s great singing voices, and reached Carnegie Hall anyhow. She was a tortured genius – later diagnosed as bi-polar. Medication made her feel a little better, “though occasionally she’d still, say, wander out of her hotel room naked and carrying a knife, looking to stab a friend”. (Brian Phillips, Grantland, 3,080 words)  Film | Technology and the evolution of storytellingA conference presentation, so more a set of bullet-points than a flowing essay. But what a set of bullet points – on Pixar, the evolution of computer graphics, and movie technology in general. New technology almost always disappoints on early use because nobody quite knows how to handle it. Its possibilities become apparent over time, as with computer graphics. The grammar of film changes. But the aim is still to tell a story. (John Lasseter, Art and Science, 3,100 words)  Television | Obituary: Patrick MacneeHis mother ran with Tallulah Bankhead before “absconding with a wealthy lesbian”; his father “enlivened dinner parties by levelling a shotgun at guests suspected of pacifist tendencies”. Expelled from Eton for running “a pornography and bookmaking empire”, Macnee trained as an actor, served in the navy, then bumped into an old friend in Piccadilly who offered him a part in a new TV series. It was The Avengers, and his poshness made him a perfect John Steed. (Telegraph, 1,270 words)  Classics | Of cabbages and kingsA classicist learns to farm, guided by Cato’s De Agri Cultura (On Agriculture), the oldest surviving work of Latin prose. “I found most of Cato’s advice about how much wine you can give the members of your chain-gang (yes, he does talk about compediti, chained slaves) irrelevant for my life in the woods. But there is one section of the book I can thoroughly recommend: the six and a half pages about cabbages”. (John Byron Kuhner, Eidolon, 2,700 words)  For more articles worth reading, visit The Browser.  If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
The week’s best arts and culture reads – including when Dylan went electric, how technology is changing storytelling and a lesson in farming from Ancient Rome.