Category: words

“Across the entire sample, there were 1.72 times as many unique words in picture books than in conversations. Part of picture books’ greater diversity, the authors note, stems from the fact that each one tells a different story about a different topic.”

“The rise of phone reading is pushing publishers to rethink the way books are designed, marketed and sold with smaller screens in mind. It’s also prompting concern about whether deep, concentrated thinking is possible amid the ringing, buzzing and alerts that come with phones.”

The blacklist of 38 titles, including works by Russian nationalists Alexander Dugin, Eduard Limonov and Sergei Glazyev, was released by the Ukrainian State Television and Radio Committee, which accused Russia of “information warfare.”

“Most serious and productive artists are “haunted” by their material—this is the galvanizing force of their creativity, their motivation. It is not and cannot be a fully conscious or volitional “haunting”—it is something that seems to happen to us, as if from without, no matter what craft is brought to bear upon it, what myriad worksheets and note cards.”

“There’s a new fantasy story from J.R.R. Tolkien set to be published later this fall: the author’s estate will be releasing The Story of Kullervo” in October, one of his earliest prose works that would eventually lead him to Middle Earth.”

“Contrary to mainstream thought that content is shrinking, the tide is actually moving away from 140 characters and ephemeral photos, and toward long-form specialty content. According to a report from BuzzSumo, long-form articles are shared more than short-form articles — based on the company’s analysis of more than 100 million articles over eight months. The study found that, on average, articles with 3,000 to 10,000 words had 8,500 shares, whereas content with 1,000 words or less averaged 4,500 shares.”

In 2004, he coined the word blurbspeak, defined as “a very special subdialect of English that’s partly hyperbole, but it’s also phrases that sound really good and are very compelling in an advertorial sense, but if you think about them, they’re literally meaningless.” On the other hand, he wrote about two dozen of them over the years, and Lucas Thompson argues that they’re genuinely worthwhile writing.

Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk with lexicographer Anne Seaton about the strange history of this strange expression. (podcast)

“A romantic novel in which a ‘blonde and blue-eyed Jewess’ falls in love with an SS-Kommandant in Theresienstadt concentration camp has caused outrage and offence in the romance writing community after it was shortlisted for two top awards.”

On the fifth anniversary of the Kindle becoming available in the UK, “the result of authors choosing to go it alone is a new digital literary landscape where romance, erotica and science fiction reign supreme and people – rather than publishing houses – are deciding what sells.”