Category: words

Sally Beauman “said she turned to fiction to spend more time with her son. Writing romances for Harlequin, she said, was a useful way to learn pacing, dialogue and how to make the plot move.”

“With the rollout of the new work, publishers, retailers and fans are preparing for an explosion of all things Harry Potter reminiscent of the series’ heyday more than decade ago.”

“You can’t just exist as a bookshop nowadays; you have to make it a place where people want to hang out.”

“In high-poverty neighborhoods, books—the very things that could supply so many of those 30 million-plus words—are hard to come by. In many poor homes, they’re nonexistent.”

“In Rome, around the year 400, a scribe and three painters created an illuminated manuscript of Virgil’s Aeneid, illustrating the the ancient hero Aeneas’ journey from Troy to Italy. 1,600 years later, the Vatican has digitized the surviving fragments of this manuscript. Known as the Vergilius Vaticanus, it’s one of the world’s oldest versions of the Latin epic poem, and you can browse it for free online.”

“What suspicion as an interpretive approach implies is that literary texts are always hiding something. The meaning of a work is buried, a brilliant jewel whose rays can only be glimpsed once the layers of obfuscating sediment have been flensed from the text. So, like a patient in analysis, whatever it seems on the surface to say, it must really mean something else. Under this cool, post-Freudian gaze the motives of authors, narrators and readers themselves are revealed as equally obscure and unreliable.”

Moise and the World of Reason, “seemingly sees Williams splitting himself in two and making the younger self horrified and repulsed by the older, whom that character sees as premonitory.”

“In an effort to create more space for healing and solidarity, to help articulate a more peaceful and just world, CF has invited a number of LGBTQ-identified writers to respond to this question: Can you tell us about a time that you felt at home in your identity? Home is a complicated notion, as several of our contributors note, and it’s ultimately inadequate to the task of realizing justice – but it is a powerful idea.”

This decision sends a strong message at a time when freedom of expression is under threat from government attempts to muzzle dissent, and from self-appointed morality enforcers affiliated with conservative groups.

“The publisher … is launching an imprint called Park Row Books, dedicated to ‘thought-provoking and voice-driven novels’ that have ‘mainstream appeal.’ The first books are scheduled for the summer of 2017.”