Category: today’s top story

“As people rushed to fill their freshly unwrapped e-readers – one of the top-selling gadgets this festive season – the online retailer said sales at its electronic book store quickly overtook orders for physical books.” It was a first.

Is a hybrid book our future? Maybe. “As discourse moves from printed pages to network screens, the dominant mode will be things that are multi-modal and multilayered,” says Bob Stein, founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book. “The age of pure linear content is going to pass with the rise of digital network content.”

“Performer and composer, eccentric and original, Monk was shrouded in mystery throughout his life. Not an especially loquacious artist (at least with journalists), he left most of his expression in his inimitable work, as stunning and unique as anyone’s in jazz–second only to Duke Ellington’s and perched alongside Charles Mingus’s.”

The company’s Diaghilev/Ballets Russes centennial program was transmitted live to 30 cinemas in Britain. Who went? A “dance audience, small but devoted and knowledgeable. And they were clearly delighted with the screening, which turned out to be not a substitute for performance but a different experience altogether – and, in some ways, better.”

“The choir’s last official performance was in 2007, around the time of the death of its founder, Walter J. Turnbull. But no one ever announced that it was gone. … For a famous organization that politicians had vowed would outlive its founder, it had a quiet end.”

“In the spirit of Christmas grumpiness, arts personalities reveal the heritage classics they secretly can’t stand.” Among the contributors are conductor Mark Elder, designer Nicky Haslam, director Jude Kelly, ballet star Edward Watson, novelist A.S. Byatt, and Covent Garden chief Tony Hall.

A cultural organization called the Oubliette pays no rent on its home, a Mayfair mansion, which the group entered “on Sunday 6 December without the permission or knowledge of the owners. … But they are not squatting, they say.” And they have a goal: “To persuade the rich to lend their empty properties to the Oubliette to use for exhibitions, concerts and plays.”

“For years, imagination was thought of as a way for children to escape from reality, and once they reached a certain age, it was believed they would push fantasy aside and deal with the real world. But, increasingly, child-development experts are recognizing the importance of imagination and the role it plays in understanding reality.”

“The 109-year-old symphony, which bills itself as the oldest American orchestra west of the Rockies, said it needs to enter bankruptcy to cut its debt and reduce its payroll by as much as half.”

She “won an Academy Award playing a saint in The Song of Bernadette and became a popular sinner in Hollywood melodramas including Duel in the Sun and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” Jones was also known for a tumultuous personal life that included marriages to producer David O. Selznick and industrialist Norton Simon.