the new york times
-
Karaoke for a Cause
The New York Times writes about how Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, overcame her fear of singing in public to raise money for a nonprofit that helps orphans in Nepal. Gilbert recalls: I said to myself, “You’re not…
-
All Girls All the Time
There have been an awful lot of girls in titles lately—The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, to name a few—writes Alexandra Alter in the New York Times. But popular, formulaic titles aside, some “girl”…
-
Get ‘Em While They’re Young
This year’s children’s literature has some exceptional bonafides. Over the next few months, a number of acclaimed novelists, including Jane Smiley and Elena Ferrante, will be publishing children’s books. Whether a five-year-old can distinguish between literary and genre fiction, only time…
-
Mapping the Brain
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley published a new study about brain activity in people listening to podcasts, the New York Times reported. “Using novel computational methods, the group broke down the stories into units of meaning: social elements,…
-
The Cool Future
“All plots tend to move deathward,” the narrator of “White Noise” says. “This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we…
-
Remaking Jane Austen
At the New York Times, Alexandra Alter interviews Curtis Sittenfield, author of a modern re-write of Pride and Prejudice, on why she decided to tackle the famous novel, and more: The novel has already proved polarizing among Austen fans. “Sadly disappointing, this…
-
The Singular They
For the New York Times, Amanda Hess gives us a brief history of the increasingly prominent and ambiguously-gendered singular they, from usage in Shakespeare to Girls and The Argonauts.
-
Dylanology
Several of Bob Dylan’s old journals, in which he painstakingly drafted the lyrics of some of his classic songs, are set to reside at the University of Tulsa for future study. Tulsa is also home to the collected papers of…
-
China Bans Foreigners from Publishing Online
China has issued a ban on foreign-owned media from publishing online within the nation. Global news agencies like Reuters, Dow Jones, the New York Times, and Bloomberg have invested considerable sums in building bureaus in the country. The foreign media…
-
Coming of Age
The publication of Go Set a Watchman may have cast Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in a new light, but the high school classic and its author will forever occupy an essential spot in the American literary canon. Michiko…
-
Conversations with Writers Braver than Me: Anne Roiphe
Anne Roiphe on respecting writers’ freedom to express the truth of their experiences, while also respecting their subjects’ prerogative to shun them for it.
-
The Big Idea: Mark Bittman
Suzanne Koven talks to food journalist, author, and activist Mark Bittman about his “Big Idea”—how food has changed in the last fifty years, and how to teach our children to eat better.