New York Times
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Mystery in Silicon Valley
Was this a brilliant viral marketing scheme, a literary treasure hunt orchestrated by some corporation angling for free publicity to promote a new energy drink or video game? Or was it a purely artistic endeavor, aimed at stimulating a discussion…
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The 100 Notables
The New York Times has released their list of notable books. If we all start reading now, we might get through at least half of them by the release of next year’s list.
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Weekly Geekery
A song of my selfie. A year after the Sony hack. Wired: the good and the bad and the in between. A visual history of the OS we all love to hate.
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To Copyright, or Not to Copyright
For the New York Times, Doreen Carvajal reports that in order to extend the copyright of Anne Frank’s diary to 2050 in Europe, the Swiss foundation that holds the book’s copyright is crediting Anne Frank’s father as a legal co-author for…
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The “Myth” Of Dead Young Writers
At the New York Times, Dana Stevens and Benjamin Moser debate whether or not we romanticize writers who die young. While Moser argues that we should not remember a writer for his death, Stevens admits that she is attracted to the “mythic…
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Do Facts Matter?
For the New York Times, Ayana Mathis and Thomas Mallon explore whether or not fiction based on historical events has a “responsibility to the truth.” While Mallon discusses how to remain within “the situational ethics” of historical fiction, Mathis differentiates between “truth” and…
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Printed Books Are Here to Stay
A recent New York Times report showed that e-book sales are declining while printed book sales are doing well. Over at Lit Hub, Adam Sternbergh argues that the printed book is going nowhere, for at least another 500 years: Whatever…
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The Rumpus Interview with Margo Jefferson
Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Margo Jefferson talks about her new memoir, Negroland, and about growing up in an elite black community in the segregated Chicago of the 1950s and 1960s.
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“The Necklace” and The Clasp
All at once there is nothing funny, but something all too sad and true, in this highly comic, highly affecting novel. Over at the New York Times Sunday Book Review, author Julia Pierpont reviews Sloane Crosley’s first novel The Clasp,…
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Haters Gonna Hate
Some movies just aren’t all that good. A.O. Scott makes the case for film snobbery: You see the problem. “Snob” is a category in which nobody would willingly, or at least unironically, claim membership. Like the related (and similarly complicated)…
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Print Soldiers On as Digital Sales Slump
Ebook sales have fallen 10 percent in the first five months of 2015. The surge of electronic books between 2008 and 2010 coupled with the stress of economic depression on independent bookstores seemed a portent of an all-digital future, but…
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Specialty Libraries Grow in Popularity
Public libraries have been growing into much more than just repositories of books. The New York Times finally gets in on the action and examines the various changes the public library system has undergone, especially the growth of libraries dedicated to specialty…