Other than The Book of the Dead, few of the texts that have survived from the age of the pharaohs have been accessible to the general reader. “Tales of shipwreck and wonder, first-hand descriptions of battles and natural disasters, songs and satires make up [a new] anthology, titled Writings from Ancient Egypt.”
Category: words
An Indie Revolution In Crossword Puzzles Gives The NYT Some Competition
A vibrant ecosystem of independent crosswords — “indies” — exists on the internet, its component puzzles multiplying and evolving, finding their niche and trying to find ways to survive. And some of them can outrate the gold standard over at the Times.
Google Restores Dennis Cooper’s Blog, And Explains Why It Was Deleted Without Warning
“Artist and author Dennis Cooper re-launched his popular blog on Monday after months of legal disputes with Google, whom many accused of censorship. The artist posted a message on the blog’s Facebook account on Friday to explain Google’s reasoning for erasing his 14-year-old blog.” (It was a 10-year-old post.)
NEA Study: Number Of Americans Reading Literature Has Declined
“According to the NEA, the share of adults who report reading literature has steadily fallen in recent years, from 47 percent in 2012 to 45 percent in 2013 and 43.1 percent in 2015.”
A Sign Language That Developed On Its Own In A Desert Village, And The Race To Study It Before It Vanishes
“In al-Sayyid, a Bedouin village in a remote corner of Israel’s Negev desert, … out of 4,000 residents, some 150 are deaf … Both hearing and deaf members of the community speak al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, a local language that developed in the village as its deaf population grew.”
President Obama To Guest-Edit Wired Magazine
“[This will be] the first time Wired (or any other magazine) has been guest-edited by a sitting president. The theme of the issue: Frontiers. … For this completely bespoke issue, he wants to focus on the future – on the next hurdles that humanity will need to overcome to move forward.”
You Can Now Get Free E-Books On The New York Subway
“Subway Reads will last longer than a summer romance, but not much longer. It was intended to promote something that will not disappear, something that transit officials see as a milestone in the digital age: Wi-Fi service in 175 underground stations.”
She’s Only The Fourth Living Writer To Be Published By The Library Of America
“The Library of America usually restricts itself to Melville, Twain, Hawthorne and the other distinguished dead. But a handful of times it has been so sure of a novelist’s importance that its austere black volumes started appearing while the writer was still alive. Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth got the call. Ursula K. Le Guin is now on this very short list.”
The Books A New Author Reads On Book Tour Can Make Or Break Them
“I’d pick up others along the way. All would be serendipitous. I’m going to learn from them not only how to handle a book tour better, but how to *be* better, fully stop.”
How A Writer Of Gay (And Wildly Silly) Erotica Became The Standard Bearer For What’s Good In Science Fiction
“If you could pick a single writer to make an effective, compassionate statement about identity politics to a divided literary community, who would you pick? Would it be a schizophrenic, autistic person who’d authored an e-book called Space Raptor Butt Invasion?”