The Guardian
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“Men of the Stacks”
Male librarians are seeking to “overthrow the cliché of the bespectacled, permanently shushing female” librarian by publishing a Calendar Girls-style calendar titled “Men of the Stacks.” Featuring twelves dudes, some partial nudity and intriguing books placements, this will surely be…
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What is Madness?
Challenging the current relationship between analyst and patient, Darian Leader’s What is Madness? calls for a revolution in the way we frame—and treat—mental illness. The Guardian reviews the “manifesto” here. “Leader is presenting us with a challenge. That we recognise…
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Scratch-n-Sniff
A scratch-and-sniff guide to New York is in the works. The children’s book, called New York PHEW York, will include “both the good (strawberry, pizza, hot dogs, churros) and the bad (garbage, sewer steam, horse manure) smells which sum up…
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Books Set Free
The Guardian will unleash 15,000 books on the Brits in a Book Swap kicking off their six-week autumn books season. Readers and writers can also give away their favorites with an embedded message for the finder. If you are in…
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Youngsters in Fiction
Here is a breakdown of child protagonists in adult fiction. After noticing patterns in the characterization of youth in various novels, the author has hypothesized three categorical portrayals—“Portraits of the artist as a young person,” “The Go-Betweens” and “The Clockwork…
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From Texting to Poeticizing
Britain’s 2009 poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, views texting as a “springboard”—not a hindrance—to strong poetry writing, arguing that the poem itself is a form of texting: “It’s a perfecting of a feeling in language – it’s a way of…
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Books to The Future
This Guardian piece challenges the notion that books are doomed, breaking down the “actual state of book publishing in Britain.” Separating anecdote from data, the piece is all about E-books and Amazon, and the impact of new formats on readers/authors/publishers.…
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Climate Change Fiction
I’m With the Bears, a collection of short stories on climate change, is due for publication this October. Published by Verso—who describes it as “an aim to bring our probable future within the grasp of our comprehension”—the project’s proceeds will…
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Plotlines in the Digital Age
Nowadays technology is not just changing how we interact with books and movies, but it has changed the plotlines themselves. It has changed the way fictional characters interact with each other, the believability of the plot—it’s destabilizing the fictional landscape.…
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A Literary Bone Hunt
Ever wonder what happened to author of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes’ bones? So have a bunch of historians and archaeologists. They’ve been trying to track them down, hoping to reveal whether there is any veracity in the rumors that…
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Jennifer Egan Has Things To Do
The most recent fiction Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan’s got a new piece in the Guardian’s Short Story Summer Special. Check it out.
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“Famous for the Wrong Book”
Oftentimes an author’s most popular work is not actually his or her best, qualitatively speaking. What about those other under-the-radar books that don’t seem to get to get credit where credit’s due? Joseph Heller wrote other books beside Catch-22, right?…