Category: words

“Tolstoy’s huge novel about Russia during the Napoleonic Wars has been adapted many times, despite the difficulty of catching the essence of a work whose essence has a lot to do with sheer scale. When the book was published, in 1869, people wondered … Was this a history or a novel? And why was it so big? It’s big because it’s both.”

It was called flyting – “a stylized battle of insults and wits that was practiced most actively between the fifth and 16th centuries in England and Scotland. Participants employed the timeless tools of provocation and perversion as well as satire, rhetoric, and early bathroom humor to publicly trounce opponents.”

“Eckstein started her company, Her Universe, in 2009 after searching for a Star Wars T-shirt at a comic book convention. Unable to find anything suited for women, she instead saw an opportunity to target an overlooked consumer. Her company has since expanded from convention and Internet sales to include retail partners like Hot Topic and, starting in March, Kohl’s, which will sell a line of Her Universe active wear. Now, Mrs. Eckstein sees another opportunity, this time as a publisher of sci-fi novels written by women.”

“While defending the team that produced the book, the publisher said that without more historical background, ‘the book may give a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves and therefore should be withdrawn.'”

“The best-selling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy said he had ‘had enough’ of writers being expected to work for nothing. He announced his decision on Twitter and revealed he had long tried to persuade the Oxford festival to change its policy ‘but they won’t. Time to go.'”

“Eight million Egyptians signed up for the newly launched ‘Egyptian Bank of Knowledge’ on its first day of operation on Saturday … The project … aims to gather international encyclopaedias, online publications, research papers, theses, books and articles in one website which will be accessible to any user with an Egyptian IP address.” (Problem is, much of that content is in English, not Arabic.)

“A new voice, who judges say ‘will change British poetry’, has won the TS Eliot poetry prize. Sarah Howe, a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, was awarded the £20,000 prize for Loop of Jade, which explores her dual British and Chinese heritage.”

The move by owner H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest “places the region’s dominant news-gatherers under the auspices of the nonprofit Philadelphia Foundation. … That structure opens philanthropic avenues to fund the company’s journalism.”

“In simple terms, Philadelphia Media Network was donated to the Institute for Journalism in New Media, which is a subsidiary of the Philadelphia Foundation, the venerable nonprofit that holds $370 million in assets. In actuality, the transaction is more complex.”