Charles Schulz did not create Charlie Brown and Linus and Lucy to talk—or act—like normal children. He created them to be funny, and to act out what became a deeply personal theater of cruelty. But it is kids, real or unreal, that he put front and center, and it is kids who have been among his most avid readers. – The Atlantic
Category: words
Writer In Decline – What Happened
Parul Sehgal: “Salman Rushdie fills a shelf, even two, nicely. He is the author of nearly 20 books — six published in the last 11 years alone, but of diminishing quality. The novels are imaginative as ever, but they are also increasingly wobbly, bloated and mannered. He is a writer in free fall. What happened?” – The New York Times
Creating Comic Books For The Blind
“Working in a highly visual art form, [Chad] Allen managed to create an auditory experience that closely mimics the sensation of reading a comic book. A whooshing sound occurs whenever a panel changes; the intentionally stilted delivery of lines, as well as narration that prompts mental images, conjure a feeling of being inside a high-stakes comic book world.” – Los Angeles Times
Using Science Fiction To Teach Computer Science Students Ethics
“There’s a long, tangled debate over how to teach engineers ethics — and whether it’s even worth doing. … But Team Ethics is making a comeback. With the morality of Big Tech again called into question, schools like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford have launched new ethics courses with fanfare” — and with the quandaries posited in many science fiction narratives making them very useful texts. – Wired
Why I Teach High School English
“Teaching is not for everyone, and that is a good thing. We need great teachers. We need people with patience and passion. High school teaching is entertainment. Erudition is worthless if you can’t communicate with kids. And kids—like everyone else—like to be entertained. To do this job right, you need to put on one hell of a show, back to back, for different audiences. That show needs to be genuine—and it needs to have substance.” – LitHub
Despite Tyranny And Censorship, Ugandan Women Are Leading A Literary Renaissance
“Uganda was once at the fulcrum of African literature. It was at Makerere University, on a hill above Kampala, that giants such as Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o gathered in 1962 for the first African Writers’ Conference, a landmark event held on the eve of independence for many countries. But Uganda would soon sink into an abyss, where power flowed from the gun and not the pen. … Yet in a place where history and politics weigh heavy, writers are finding fresh voice.” – The Economist
Books Are Forever. Is Reading?
“It was never the books as objects that people worried would vanish with the advent of e-readers and other personal devices: it was reading itself. The same change was prophesied by Thomas Edison, at the dawn of the movie age. People fretted again with the advent of the radio, the TV, and home computers. Yet undistracted reading didn’t perish the moment any of these technologies were switched on.” – The New Yorker
How Literature Was Deployed As Weapon In The Cold War
In the wake of the second world war, Russia and the West feared the domino effect of enfeebled countries like Albania falling into the clutches of imperialist capitalism or communism. Each side deployed literature as a frontline force in their struggle. – The Spectator
Amazon Is Opening A Physical Bookstore Right Across The Street From Ann Patchett’s Nashville Indie
But, an opinion writer says, Nashville needs to remember what’s important. “Independent bookstores don’t operate according to the normal rules of capitalism. They aren’t trying to beat each other. They aren’t even trying to beat Amazon. They’re creating communities — cozy places to beat the heat or come in from the cold.” (Amazon? Is not cozy.) – The New York Times
Do Our Brains Know The Difference Between Print Books And Audiobooks?
No. “The subject’s brains were creating meaning from the words in the same way, regardless if they were listening or reading. In fact, the brain maps for both auditory and visual input they created from the data looked nearly identical.” – Discover