“It’s a bit of tech innovators being hoisted by their own petard: the massive drop in cost in back-office software and computers has benefitted small stores as much as a large ones. It costs much less now to do much more than a decade [ago], reducing overhead and improving efficiency.”
Category: words
A Farewell From ‘The Man Responsible For The Spelling Mistakes In The Guardian’
David Marsh: “The brief given me was, broadly, to stop people calling the paper ‘the Grauniad’. Or, since this professional suicide mission was always unlikely to succeed, at least give them less reason to do so.”
How To Thin The Herd Of Your Books (And No, Not By Moving To E-Books)
“If you read a book from your shelves and dislike it, then this is a good day for you: now you can ditch it. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up strenuously disliking a book by an until-now untried author whose work you have in multiplicity.”
The ‘Final Harry Potter’ Book Creates Excitement Like Nothing Seen Since The (Final) Harry Potter Book In 2007
“In New York and across the country, so-called Potterheads swarmed bookstores Saturday night and into Sunday morning to celebrate the release, as if they had found the secret winged key that not only let them back into their childhoods but also opened the door to another generation.”
When College Freshman Reading Spreads Out Community-Wide
“In its sixth year, the report continues to be frustrated with the content of these programs. Among its key findings: ‘The list of readings continues to be dominated by recent, trendy, and intellectually unchallenging books.'”
Throw-down Challenge: An Author’s Body Of Work
“Readers and writers do not think of a body of work in the same way. To a reader, a body of work is a static totality by which a writer may be assessed. To a writer, it is something of a taunt.”
The ‘Zines Of Renaissance England
“From the 15th century onward, everyday English people passed broadsides around, sang their songs, and gossiped about the news contained within. Unlike books or early newspapers, broadsides and pamphlets were not curated nor intended for a specific, upper-class audience. This early form of journalism and storytelling was sold on the cheap, and many took no time at all to read.”
The Latest Trend In LGBT Fiction: Gay Shame
“Shame informs much of the work of our latter-day gay novelists, offered as an antidote to our overriding gay culture that recognizes ‘pride’ as the core (and perhaps only) important expression of gayness today. The literary projects offered by [Hanya] Yanagihara and [Garth] Greenwell are cultural counterpoints to gay pride, attempts to show how shame – just as much as pride, if not more – still meaningfully forms part of the terrain of gay life, and must be acknowledged as such.”
Can Audiences Hooked On Binge-Watching TV Be Wooed To Binge-Reading Books?
“As TV dramas get better and better, book publishers are hoping to convert binge TV watchers into binge readers. Serialized books have a long history in publishing — Charles Dickens famously released many his novels in serial form.”
Unmentionables: Euphemisms Are Like Underwear, Best Changed Frequently
John McWhorter: “What the cognitive psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker has artfully termed ‘the euphemism treadmill’ is not a tic or a stunt. It is an inevitable and, more to the point, healthy process, necessary in view of the eternal gulf between language and opinion.”