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We Have So Many Conspiracy Theories Because They’re Stories, And Stories Are How We Live

This is not great. "We are condemned to navigate the Space Age world with Stone Age minds; because of this inherent biological anachronism, man is the ape that imitates, tells stories, and morally condemns others." - LitHub

The Essential Octavia Butler

Of course, if you've already read Parable of the Sower, much of the last four years might have felt a little too eerily familiar. But moving on: "Butler was an observer and ponderer. The probing mind that animates her novels, short stories and essays is obsessed with the viability of the human enterprise. Will we survive our worst habits?...

Why Do Some Mock Romance So Very Hard When It Sells Better Than Hotcakes Ever Will?

In the UK, for instance, publishing company Mills & Boon (the company that just landed Fergie as an author) publishes 700 books a year and sells one book every 10 seconds or so (and that's only 16 percent of the romances sold per year in the UK). Author "Annie O’Neil, the writer of 25 Mills & Boon books, said...

The Gatsby Glut

Hurrah for copyright expiration: There are many new editions, with introductions and critical essays by voices that haven't been heard enough in the American canon. Then there are the graphic novels, editions with lavish new art, a novel about Nick Carraway's life before Jay Gatsby, The Gay Gatsby (Just how is that different from the original, you may wonder?...

The Inaugural Poet, 22 Years Old, Is Probably The Youngest In US History

Amanda Gorman will read a poem called "The Hill We Climb" at the inaugural ceremony on Wednesday (assuming it goes according to plan). "Unlike most 22-year-olds, Gorman has experience in inaugural poetry, having written one for the inauguration of Harvard’s president Larry Bacow." - LitHub

An Author And Editor Says To Stop Thinking Books Have Meaning For Everyone

Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning: "I grew up middle class and I went to school, and from the school bus you’d see kids washing plates in the gutter, working at these little roadside eateries. We had to get school uniforms made, and the tailor’s apprentice would be a person your age. Books are very meaningful to me; at...

Learning How Not To Read Like A Critic

"One of the first lessons you learn in grad school is to hide your personal taste or risk being shamed for liking the wrong sorts of things. Scholars have been conditioned to respond to talk of likes and dislikes with embarrassment, if not outright contempt. The facade of critical detachment may be on the way out, however." - Public...

Will Self: How Should We Be Reading?

"There’s always this quality of endeavor about reading—and at the same time, in cognitive terms it’s hard work. When someone reading complex passages of prose—ones, say, that attempt to convey human lives in all their manifold sensuous and intellectual complexity—is placed in a MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanner, we can see on the machine’s visual display that almost all...

Amazon Sued For Colluding With Big Five Publishers In E-Book Price-Fixing

"The suit, filed in the Southern District of New York on January 14 by Seattle-based firm Hagens Berman, … currently names only Amazon as a defendant. However, it labels each of the Big Five publishers — Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin Random House — as '“co-conspirators' in an alleged scheme … to squelch consumer price competition...

We Need A Moratorium On Comparisons To Orwell’s ‘1984’

Especially for some folks, writes former high school English teacher Rachel Klein. "'This is just like 1984!' the right-wing mob cries as it changes the very meaning of words to suit its nefarious aims. 'So Orwellian!' its leaders cry as they demand unthinking fealty to an unhinged, unquestioned leader. … It's a text that allows them to frame themselves...

Why We’re Still Fascinated By Gatsby

"Were you to lay this thing out by the sentence, it’d be as close as an array of words could get to strands of pearls. 'The cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses'? That line alone is almost enough to make me quit typing for the rest of my life." - Paris Review

The Best-Selling Books Of 2020 – Obama Tops The List

"A Promised Land, the first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs, was the top print title in 2020, moving nearly 2.6 million copies at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. That number is lower, however, than the 3.4 million copies of Michelle Obama’s Becoming sold in 2018, and the former first lady’s book hit the top 25 overall list...

New Memoir’s Accusations of Incest Rattle French Intelligentsia And Its Culture Of Silence

In the book, La familia grande, prominent attorney Camille Kouchner, the daughter of Bernard Kouchner, former foreign minister and co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, says that her stepfather — political scientist and well-known pundit Olivier Duhamel, chairman (until last week) of the body that oversees the renowned Paris university Sciences Po — sexually abused her twin brother for two...

Earliest Recording Of Allen Ginsberg Reading ‘Howl’ To Be Released

"A 'lost' recording of Allen Ginsberg reading his then-fresh epic poem 'Howl' in 1956 will be released for the first time in April, thanks to a personal connection between Reed College, where the performance was recorded 65 years ago, and the archivally oriented label Omnivore Recordings." - Variety

Orwell Topped Book Bestseller Lists This Weekend. But…

“1984” rose to the top of Amazon’s top-selling book list over the weekend. On Monday, it reached the No. 1 spot. Not bad for a book published in 1949. Too bad few people citing the book’s dystopian horrors in earnest seem to understand the usage. - USA Today

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