Category: words

Founded in 1971, the worldwide chain enjoyed decades of dominance in the book retail market — until the internet blew up. – New York Magazine

The hedge fund that bought the beleaguered Barnes & Noble last week also owns Waterstones, the UK’s leading bookstore chain, which had been suffering from similar troubles. So the new owners are sending over to B&N the man who led Waterstones back to profitability, James Daunt. Can he revive the U.S. chain? “I have done it before,” he says, “the scale is a lot bigger, but so are the resources available.” – Publishers Weekly

Last month The Atlantic published an essay by an Elizabethan scholar that suggested that “an Elizabethan writer named Emilia Bassano might have had a hand, or more, in the creation of William Shakespeare’s work.” Now the magazine has asked five Shakespeare experts to weigh in on the idea. – The Atlantic

Belonging to the London cluster made writers substantially more productive. The study found that “the average writer in London saw their productivity go up by 12 percent. By comparison, writers in smaller clusters, in Dublin, Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge, saw no such gains. Furthermore, being part of the London cluster increased the likelihood of an author having their work published in any given year by 24 percent.” – CityLab

Barnes & Noble will probably never be the cultural and commercial force it once was, even if it doesn’t end up quite those dire straits. It has missed too many opportunities by now. But it still has a chance to write a next chapter that doesn’t include its demise.   – Bloomberg

Returning to the book itself is something of a tonic against despair, but: “We are living with a new kind of regime that didn’t exist in Orwell’s time. It combines hard nationalism—the diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatred—with soft distraction and confusion: a blend of Orwell and Huxley, cruelty and entertainment.” And we chose it ourselves. – The Atlantic

Well then, you become obsessed with theoretical physics, of course. Just ask Nell Freudenberger. Freudenberger “was, like so many other young women, encouraged to believe she didn’t ‘have the right kind of brain for it.’ After doing badly in a maths test in her teens, she was told by a teacher that she might as well quit.” – The Guardian (UK)

Svetlana Alexiévich published Voices from Chernobyl in 1997, 11 years after the catastrophe. Now, a new HBO miniseries is bringing the story to life for a new generation – “but for Alexiévich and the former citizens of the USSR who were living in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia at that time, it is still life.” – El País (Spain)

Linda Fairstein published 24 books after retiring as a prosecutor, but the new Netflix series When They See Us shows her “determined to see the boys convicted, regardless of inconsistencies and evidence that suggested their innocence.” That may be dramatized – and she has threatened a lawsuit – but the fallout has been swift. – The New York Times