Not too long ago, in the book section at Target, I overheard a woman say to her companion, “I stay away from big books.” They walked away, so I didn’t get to hear any more of the conversation, but it made me think about big books. I can imagine many reasons someone might offer for […]
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David Bowie’s Top 100 Books Bowie’s top 100 book list spans decades, from Richard Wright’s raw 1945 memoir Black Boy to Susan Jacoby’s 2008 analysis of U.S. anti-intellectualism in The Age of American Unreason. his list shows a lot of love to American writers, from the aforementioned to Truman Capote, Hubert Selby, Jr., Saul Bellow,
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I had a poor reading year in 2015, managing to complete only 28 books of a goal of 40. But this year I should have more time to read, so I’ve once again challenged myself to read 40 books this year on Goodreads. I set and exceeded that goal in 2013 and 2014, so I’m
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It’s not quite the end of the year yet, but since it looks as if I won’t finish any more books in time, I might as well go ahead with my annual list. I had an abysmal year of reading this year, only 28 books. While most other “best books of 2015” lists include books
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Icelanders have a beautiful tradition of giving books to each other on Christmas Eve and then spending the night reading. This custom is so deeply ingrained in the culture that it is the reason for the Jolabokaflod, or “Christmas Book Flood,” when the majority of books in Iceland are sold between September and December in
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Most readers of Jane Austen name Pride and Prejudice as their favorite of her novels. But my favorite has always been Emma. I don’t remember whether Emma was the first Austen novel I read, but I do remember that it was the first novel that, when I had finished, I went back to the beginning
“Jane Austen’s Guide to Alzheimer’s” Read More »
If you enjoyed a good book and you’re a woman, the critics think you’re wrong Jennifer Weiner never passes up an opportunity to lament how the world of literary criticism mistreats authors (like her) and readers of popular literature. “Every once in a while,” she explains, “a literary novel becomes tremendously popular, transcending the typical
Vanishing Point This piece is a translation of a speech given by Swedish novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard on receiving a German literary award. Here the writer explains how reading fiction helps us to understand humanity in general by focusing our awareness on individual people. What characterizes our age is “the sheer volume of images of
The universe within. This is not an example of outstanding writing. But I can’t help but warm to someone who can write this: While reading you create a universe within you where your characters talk and move through breathtaking landscapes and everything is as unique as you and your imagination are. You become the container
Is Google Books Leading Researchers Astray? Google Books, “a searchable digital archive of millions of texts spanning the history of the printed word,” can allow scholars to analyze the history of language and culture. But a recent published paper by three data scientists from the University of Vermont claims that the basic design of Google
