Reading: It’s a lifestyle thing. “Candles are also now a common impulse purchase at independent bookstores, along with tote bags and coffee. There are shelves upon shelves of literary-themed ones at the Strand in New York, which famously brags of 18 miles of books.” – The New York Times
Category: words
Stephen King Angrily Tweets At Paper For Cutting Book Reviews, And Then Boom
The paper, Maine’s Portland Press-Herald, tweeted that it would restart regional book reviews if King – a Maine writer, of course – could bring in 100 new subscriptions. As of Sunday, the number was at 200 and counting. – The New York Times
Quit Using ‘Relatable’ As A Criterion To Judge (Women’s) Writing
“The point of this is—women own the things that happen to them, even if these things happened between them and much more powerful or well-known men. Writing about these things does not make women narcissists.” – LitHub
Going Inside The World’s Most Beautiful Bookstore
The bookstore in Argentina, which opened in a building modeled after the Paris Opera, won the title in 2019 – 18 years after NPR’s Bob Mondello first filed this report. – NPR
The Rise Of Realistic Self-Help Literature
Perfection isn’t real, and now publishing is starting to push “realistic” self-help books (possibly because everyone into the category had already bought, and then Konmarie’d, all of the ones that said humans were perfectable?). – The Guardian (UK)
Was Modernist English Literature Deliberately Written To Keep The Riff-Raff Away?
Yes, argues scholar Jonathan Rose. “The intelligentsia was driven to create literary modernism by a profound loathing of ordinary common readers. The intellectuals feared the masses not because they were illiterate but because, by the early twentieth century, they were becoming more literate, thanks to public education, adult education, scholarships, and cheap editions of the great books.” — JSTOR Daily
When J Edgar Hoover’s FBI Declared Writers Enemies Of The State
Reading through dossier after dossier on 16 American writers contained in Writers Under Surveillance: The FBI Files, what strikes you immediately is the terrifying absurdity of Hoover’s obsession with anyone who didn’t follow his patriotic party line and dared to express critical concern about the national psyche in well-written words. – New Statesman
It’s Increasingly Difficult To Make A Living As A Writer. Why?
There was a time when writers – of books, of magazine articles – could make a decent middle class living. That’s increasingly rare. And yet, if anything, we’re reading more. So what has happened? – The New York Times
Fighting Hindu Nationalism With Urdu Poetry
As prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party continues to encourage an exclusionary Hindu version of Indian nationalism, more liberal-minded Indians (by no means only Muslims) are reading, writing, reciting, and listening — in venues from tea shops to stadiums — to poetry in Urdu, the (to oversimplify) Islamized version of Hindi that has a revered, centuries-old tradition of verse across the subcontinent. — The Guardian
When The First Lesbian Novel Was Banned, Its Author Got Support From All Over The Globe
Following a particularly nasty campaign from certain book critics, Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness was blocked from publication and circulation in the UK as “obscene libel.” But thousands of letters poured in to Hall from supporters; one such read, “No one could finish your book, Miss Hall, without donning a sword and shield forever in the cause of inverts.” — The Guardian