Alok A. Khorana: "When I first read the poem, I was puzzled by the structure ... because it felt strangely familiar. ... The entire poem seemed to me structured like an Upanishad." This, it turns out, is not happenstance: Eliot knew those Sanskrit texts well. - Literary Hub
There are old books and there are old books. Sometimes opening one that I have innocently purchased for 3.99 plus postage can feel like I’ve inhaled enough mold spores to start growing a very large inner book colony. - 3 Quarks Daily
Or, if you like horror books, then it's also Hanukkah and Christmas and Solstice and Valentine's Day rolled up into one in Louisville, where Butcher Cabin Books sports (fake) blood over its entire façade as well. - NPR
Even though she's famous for memoir and novels of country life, she says, "I do not miss the deference which was shown to people in authority. That, I feel, led to the creation of megalomaniacs." - Irish Times
Memoirist Mary Karr (The Liars Club, Cherry, Lit) says, "Memory is a pinball in a machine—it messily ricochets around between image, idea, fragments of scenes, stories you’ve heard. Then the machine goes tilt and snaps off." - LitHub
Shehan Karunatilaka, who won for his book The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, wrote on Instagram and Facebook, "The book took seven years to write, with countless hours of research, craft and hard work poured into it." - The Guardian (UK)
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, author of The House of Rust, won the prize, named for the legendary Portland author and activist - but "Le Guin was famously skeptical of awards, so designing one in her honor was especially difficult." - Oregon Public Broadcasting
For one thing, it's nearly impossible to digitize everything in an archive, or to connect it in context. "Physical documents can help us understand individuals from the past, while capturing the world in which they lived." - The Atlantic
Predicated on “protecting our kids” from the “scourge” of sexual progressivism, the anti-democratic right is forming a powerful religious alliance against secular liberalism. - The New Republic
Certainly a book can cause a temporary change, which was all that most researchers had thought of measuring with fMRIs. Dr. Gregory Berns wanted to learn if the changes that reading a powerful book caused might remain after the book had been finished and the stimulus was gone. - Literary Hub
"'I know this woman!' she kept thinking. 'Angered by my inability to summon suitable language,' she writes, 'I threw my pencil on the floor, sucked my teeth in disgust.' Sth. 'So that's what I wrote' she says, and it became the novel's first line." - T — The New York Times Style Magazine
It turns out that the strategy of exploitation prevails in fiction at large. Knowing the topics of just a few books by an author, fairly accurate predictions can be made about the rest of their books. - Psyche
"I began to enjoy its warmth and inclusivity, the way everyone was equally gathered under its umbrella. I had to admit: It didn't feel sexist, racist or classist. It felt friendly and — most of the time — genuine." Maud Newton's paean to the second-person plural pronoun. - The New York Times Magazine
The unionized journalists — well, most of them — voted to join their colleagues in other departments to protest what they say is the owners' refusal to negotiate a contract. But the vote to join the strike won by only two votes and up to 40% of the newsroom continues to work. - Poynter
It’s a common misapprehension that “editing” is a synonym for “deleting.” Yes, by all means trim away what I call the Throat-Clearers and Wan Intensifiers. But I have learned that prose often benefits from the cushioning of a few extra words — for rhythm, for sense. - Washington Post
