Posts by author
Ian MacAllen
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Notable NYC: 8/22–8/28
Sunday 8/22: Tiphanie Yanique, Morgan Parker, and Mahogany Browne celebrate the Fort Green Summer Literary Festival. BRIC Media House, 2 p.m., free. Ricardo Hernandez, Joshua Kleinberg, and Tommy Pico join Newfangled 7 with host Robert Siek. Bureau of General Services-Queer…
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A Book for Drinking
Theresa Dankovich’s “The Drinkable Book,” can purify water for drinking—enough for one person for more than four years. Gizmodo reports that the book’s pages are coated with nanoparticles that purifies the water while the pages are printed with important water…
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Creativity Builds Healthy Economies
Creativity is an essential component of a healthy economy, and Western nations are doing a terrible job of fostering intellectual creativity. Writers, artists, and thinkers are underpaid, as developed economies have given priority to a corporate model of shareholders and profits rather…
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A Library of Seeds
Albuquerque’s newest library won’t have any books. Instead, the new library will focus on agricultural seeds. Farmers can checkout seeds, plant them, and return new seeds after the harvest.
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
Georgia’s Book Exchange opened this week in South Boston. The store is in Virginia, not Massachusetts, and its named after a woman, not a state—Angela Harding and her late mother Georgia had long planned on opening the store built on…
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The Feeling of Finished
Completing a book can be an emotional rollercoaster. If you’ve ever wanted to know how it feels, look no further than The Millions where Claire Cameron has compiled the reactions of a number of authors.
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Notable NYC: 8/15–8/21
Saturday 8/15: Jonathan Weisman and Jefferey Bartsch discuss No. 4 Imperial Lane. BookCourt, 4 p.m., free. Sunday 8/16: Stephanie Gray and Paolo Javier perform collaborative film narration, along with Harry Roseman. Queens Museum, 3 p.m., $8. Monday 8/17: Gabriel Urza…
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The Scent of Literature
Odors can stimulate the senses, bring back memories, and set moods. That means scent can be a powerful tool for writers. Over at Electric Literature, Jason Diamond looks at Tanwi Nandini Islam’s Bright Lines and the role of smelling in her…
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College Bookstores and Digital Textbooks
Student textbooks are a big moneymaker for college bookstores. But as textbooks go digital, college bookstores are under threat as publishers gain more power over the means of distribution of the textbooks. Forbes takes a look at the changes in the textbook market and…
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The Curious Incident of Censorship
A Florida school has removed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time from its reading list, reports the Guardian. It’s not the first time the book has been deemed controversial, and author Mark Haddon had this to say about…
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Solve This Mystery
The British Library has a mystery to solve, and wants help in doing so from the Internet, reports C-Net. They have an 800-year-old sword with an indecipherable inscription, and the librarians have posted to the library blog asking for help in figuring out…
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Profits Over Integrity
Universities have spent the last several decades expanding the number of adjunct professors they hire, reducing full-time faculty and paying pauper’s wages to these part-time employees. Samuel Hazo explains how cutting full-time faculty is a disservice to academics in the…