“The mystery of Midsummer Night gets bound up in the larger mystery of Shakespeare. Yet it is an anomaly, distinct from anything he wrote before or after, a world to itself with its own rules and its own moods.”
Category: words
Are Children’s Books The Next Frontier For High-Quality Nonfiction Illustration And Writing?
“For a long time it has been thought that publishers serve fiction well, while non-fiction has been dominated by glossy reference books. But we are currently seeing a boom in beautifully illustrated narrative non-fiction – and this Greenaway win marks a high point in the trend.”
The Self Of A Memoir Is Just As Fictional As Any Character In A Novel
Jill Talbot: “I worry I already live in a perpetual state of detachment from the world, from experiences, from people — I see the essay in everything. So when I begin to think about how to shape an experience via formal experimentation or point of view or metaphor, the experience dissolves and the essay emerges.”
A “Golden Age” For University Presses?
“The mainstream may be getting dumber by the day, but we are living in what looks like a golden age of publishing for, of all people, the university presses.”
Amazon’s ‘Pay-Per-Page’ Plan Isn’t Just About Royalties – It Could Change The Way Writers Write
“The retail giant’s new way of calculating payments for Kindle book loans has worrying implications for how literature is read – and how it’s written.”
An Episode Of Diaeresis: Why ‘The New Yorker’ Always Spells ‘Coöperate’ With Those Two Dots
“Here we learn how to pronounce it and how to use it, as well as how to avoid it, if desired.” One of the magazine’s copy editors, Mary Norris, explains the diaeresis in the latest episode of the podcast Comma Queen.
How Did The New York Public Library Lose Its Way?
“What went wrong at one of the world’s eminent research libraries? NYPL, as it is often known, has been under intermittent financial pressure for most of its history, but in the last few years it has been enveloped by a controversy that has exposed the institution to unprecedented public scrutiny. What stands revealed is a library that is abandoning its core mission of research and is losing its way in the digital age.”
Book Publishers Are Finally Starting To Invest In Real Fact-Checking
“By tradition and by default, books aren’t verified to anything near the standard of a magazine piece. Publishers don’t even consider verification their business. … In fact, the practice of checking books is fairly common, though it’s also expensive. This fall, for the first time, one publisher is even promising to pay for it. Which is a pretty radical departure.”
The Couple Who Are Finally Bringing Us The Real Dostoevsky (Eat Your Heart Out, Constance Garnett)
“When we first told [this old Russian émigré lady] we were translating The Brothers Karamazov, she said, Oh, Dostoevsky, I hope you correct his awful style. I said, No, that is precisely what we’re going to keep.” A conversation with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
Panned By Critics, “50 Shades Of Grey” Sequel Sells Million Copies In UK In First Week, Breaks Sales Records
“Released last Thursday, Grey tells the story of the S&M-focused relationship between businessman Christian Grey and shy student Anastasia Steele from the perspective of Christian – something its British author James writes in her dedication that fans had “asked … and asked … and asked … and asked” for.”