Category: words

“India’s Jaipur Literature Festival can claim to be one of the biggest in the world – and certainly the most fun. Vijai Maheshwari reports on the big speakers, controversies, and hits from this year.”

Kate DiCamillo’s Flora and Ulysses, the story of a young girl’s friendship with a magic squirrel, and Brian Floca’s Locomotive, about the beginnings of the transcontinental railroad, have won this year’s John Newbery and Randolph Caldecott Medals, America’s highest honors for children’s literature.

“The role of libraries is essential here, as secure repositories for the written word. And here I must admit a fear. In their rush to digitisation – an enthusiasm I find in most librarians I meet – there is the danger that libraries may too quickly abandon their crucial historical role.”

“After years of hand-waving by enthusiasts and detractors, we’re finally getting to the point where we can actually measure what’s going on.”

“I’ll always be doing some variation of this current schedule: working primarily for an organization I really believe in, assisting someone I respect and admire who provides me with challenging and well-paid work, and working on my own personal projects as a writer.”

“Wherever he went, he had stacks of onionskin paper with him, and always a cup of coffee or tea by his side, always a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.”

Or, alternatively, Aristotle Recommended These Three Elements for a Great Story, And Here’s How to Balance Them to Get a Hit.

“Only 20% of the 1,600 self-published authors surveyed, and just a quarter of the almost 800 writers with a traditional book deal, judged it “extremely important” to ‘make money writing books’. Shift the issue to publishing ‘a book that people will buy’ and the figures leap to 56% and 60% respectively.”

Of course, you can read little or nothing at all and still be brilliant at “reading between the lines” of a conversation. But in today’s world, fluid intelligence and reading also go hand in hand.

Xiaolu Guo, a Chinese-British writer and filmmakes on Granta‘s hotlist of best young British novelists, told Franzen this while both were on a panel at the Jaipur Literature Festival. (Jhumpa Lahiri piled on.)