“The largest of them were only three-quarters of an inch thick—thin enough to fit in the pocket of a soldier’s pants. Soldiers read them on transport ships, in camps and in foxholes. Wounded and waiting for medics, men turned to them on Omaha Beach, propped against the base of the cliffs. Others were buried with a book tucked in a pocket.”
Category: words
When A Black Woman Wins A Major Prize, And The White Presenter Makes A Racist Joke
“She was worth the time it would take to come up with a joke that was less lazy. Her story deserved better. A writer’s victory is also a victory for the many readers nourished by her work.”
Are Older Novelists More Likely To Tackle Class As A Subject?
Amanda Coe: “Certainly my interest in the idea of social mobility comes from my own experience of being from a working-class family but ending up a middle-class product of that because of my education.”
How Do Successful Writers Deal With ‘Reader’s Block’?
“I read a ton leading up to a project, but then when I’m right in the middle of it, it’s best if I’m not being influenced by other fiction. I can pretty much always read poetry, however.”
Found! The Letter That Inspired Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’
“Kerouac told The Paris Review in 1968 that poet Allen Ginsberg loaned the letter to a friend who lived on a houseboat in Northern California. Kerouac believed the friend then dropped it overboard.”
Will The Literary Town Of Sag Harbor Lose All Of Its Bookstores?
“‘People say to me that they couldn’t move to a place without a great bookstore,’ Ms. Szoka said. ‘The community would be diminished if there wasn’t a place like this.'”
‘Gone Girl’ Author Gillian Flynn Doesn’t Give A Hoot For Likable Women In Literature
“I had about 24 hours where I hovered under my covers and was like: ‘I killed feminism. Why did I do that? Rats. I did not mean to do that.’ And then I very quickly kind of felt comfortable with what I had written.”
When Teens Fall In Love With Their E-Readers …
“You know that irresistible urge, that impulse you have to want to buy a book and start reading it at that very moment? Ebooks satisfy that hunger. Sitting at home, with a few clicks, I can now have delivered to me within thirty seconds any book that I want.”
Writing – And Reading – A Novel Is Like Crossing The Berlin Wall
Haruki Murakami: “In the face of the dark, violent and cynical reality in which we live, this might seem at times like a powerless and fleeting hope. But the power that each individual has to imagine is found precisely in this: in the quiet yet sustained effort to keep on singing, to keep on telling stories, without losing heart.”
Should We Care About The Disappearance Of Marginalia With Digital Books?
“Kindle did launch a public notes feature in 2011, which allows people to make their notes and highlights available to others, but some still worry digital marginalia won’t be preserved as technology advances, leaving future historians without the kind of marginalia penned by people like Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen, and other historical figures. Others wonder whether there’s a point in trying to preserve marginalia at all.”