quartz
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Transgressing Familiarity: Talking with Thomas Page McBee
Thomas Page McBee discusses his new memoir, AMATEUR.
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This Week in Essays
At Granta, Deepti Kapoor’s observations on traveling the world draw her closer to home. At The Rumpus, Kaylie Jones writes on the ripple effect mental illness has on a family grappling with a loved one’s struggles. Danielle Jackson traces her literary heritage and the…
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Digital Ownership
In an article for Quartz, Christopher Groskopf dispels a myth many of us believe—in fact, we don’t own our ebooks. Or our software. Or digital movies, music, and games. Instead, we purchase licenses that allow us access to a particular product.…
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Facing Reality in China’s “Ultra-Unreal” Literature
A literary movement aiming to express the surrealist daily life of modern China (a reality that can’t be captured by traditional genres like satire or horror) is giving the next generation of Chinese authors the opportunity to subtly critique their…
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The Last Private Libraries
Not all libraries are free and open to the public, and for much of modern history, private subscription libraries with paying patrons were the norm. While most libraries in the United States are now public institutions, a few specialty subscription…
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Print Books Bounce Back
Physical books are not only surviving, they are thriving. New data suggest that 2015 saw an uptick in the number of print books sold.
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Reading a Continent
Fear not if you don’t have any vacation plans this summer. Quartz has created a literary playlist of nine contemporary Latin American authors that will utterly transport you.
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Nollywood in Vogue
Nearly a decade ago, Binvayanga Wainaina wrote an essay for Granta that changed his whole life. Now, he looks at the interior of African publishing, the landscape of literature on the continent, and the “Nollywoodification of the book market”: “I am least…
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House of Library Catalog Cards
The New York Public Library owns an absolutely peculiar collection: a 6000+ cards catalog of hand-typed children books reviews, written by librarians over the years. Lynn Lobash, NYPL reader services overseer, explained to Quartz that, “There’s about a billion card…
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Bill Gates’s Favorite Author
The car I drive to work is made of around 2,600 pounds of steel, 800 pounds of plastic, and 400 pounds of light metal alloys. The trip from my house to the office is roughly four miles long, all surface streets, which…