Posts by: Diksha Basu

Summer Days Are Here

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It’s Friday! And it’s the summer! Are you sitting in your cubicle feeling the same joy Kassia Miller writes about at McSweeney’s? And when it’s summer in the office, I get to break out all my favorite summer clothes: my lighter-weight wool pants, conservative button-up shirts with cap sleeves instead of long sleeves, and my […]

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Think (and Think Some More) Before You Speak

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Notably, there are a few verbal tics that we mistakenly think index insecurity, even though they don’t. These (mostly feminine) quirks—uptalk, vocal fry—are often subtle expressions of power, innovativeness, or upward mobility. In fact, Adam Gopnik recently wrote about how verbal fillers like “um” and “you know” underscore a speaker’s conscientiousness, her sensitivity to the […]

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New Orleans Decoded

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Tempted to move to New Orleans? It seems as though more and more writers are heading there these days. At the New York Review of Books, Nathaniel Rich—who moved to the city in 2010—explores the history and culture of New Orleans through books by Richard Campanella and Sheri Fink. About Campanella’s book, Rich writes: He had learned, as […]

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In Conversation with Geoff Dyer

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Geoff Dyer knows no boundaries, especially when it comes to genre, and that’s what makes him such a fascinating author to follow. He’s written fiction and nonfiction—without revealing which is which—about taking drugs in Southeast Asia, jazz, photography, and even women in sundresses, and now has a book out about life aboard an aircraft carrier. At the LA […]

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How to Open a Book

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It can be tricky. Let Electric Literature help you figure out the best way to open a new book. There are several different ways to open your next book. Try, for instance: The Precious: A favorite of collectors who want to keep their books in as near mint condition as possible, The Precious involves only […]

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The Economics of Book Festivals

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These days, you can’t throw a book without hitting a book festival. The Jaipur Literature Festival, the world’s biggest literature festival, is reported to have had 200,000 attendees this spring. In Britain alone, there are over 350 book festivals a year. For Financial Times, Carl Wilkinson looks at the economics behind these festivals. Who makes […]

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Travel Writing for Summer Reading

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The New York Times Book Review recently published a summer reading special issue. In it, the terrific British travel writer and novelist Lawrence Osborne has an essay on travel writing, along with some summer reading recommendations. He writes about books by John Waters, Iain Sinclair, and Tim Butcher and ruminates on what we look for […]

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The Writer’s Writer

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Karl Ove Knausgaard, the handsome Norwegian writer, is traveling through the U.S. giving talks and readings and interviews. It’s as good a time as any to start reading his 6-part autobiography, My Struggle, especially if you are a writer. As the New York Times reports, Knausgaard’s American counterparts are all raving about this writer—Jeffrey Eugenides, […]

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