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The Great Salinger Sequel Hoax
The pranksters behind the Catcher in the Rye sequel and the fight over who owns fictional characters. J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of...
Read & DiscussPoetic License
The Oxford poetry scandal is making headlines. But back in the day we expected writers to be wild. Poets do not often make the first page of...
Read & DiscussHow to Find a Summer Book on the Web
The world of book review websites could use an edit. Here are a few of best places to look for summer reading. A few times a week I get asked...
Read & DiscussThe Grad School Brain Drain
Another problem with academia: It isolates America's most deft thinkers. The most surprising aspect of Mark C. Taylor's recent New York Times...
Read & DiscussShopping for Your Imperfect Mother
A step-by-step guide to solving your mother's (day) woes My current favorite fictional mom is Mary-Louise Parker's Nancy Botwin from Weeds. A...
Read & DiscussThat Reminds Me
Notes towards a theory of Twitter A few weeks ago it was "Style" week in my undergraduate writing course. We discussed clarity (use active...
Read & DiscussPublishers Should Start Using Birth Control
We're (still) publishing a city's worth of books each year. Twelve is a book publisher, established in 2005, with a smart, small...
Read & DiscussRead This First, Then Get Brisket
The Passover Haggadah beyond Maxwell House This Wednesday and Thursday night, Jews all over the world will sit down to dinner and read,...
Read & DiscussThe Return of Riches to Rags Tales
Some of our best stories are about hubris, aiming too high, and falling from spectacular heights. The morning headlines read like teensy plot...
Read & DiscussOur "Dead Pledge" Crisis
Exploring the (Latin) Roots of Our Mortgage Problems I am a national statistic. Three years ago, I decided to move. I found a new house,...
Read & DiscussCriminal Advances in Book Publishing
Let's boycott books by Blagojevich, Condi, and other non-writers Earlier this month, Rod Blagojevich received a six-figure book...
Read & DiscussWho's Your Momma? Probably Not a Famous Author.
Why are there so few mothers among our favorite writers? The numbers are not good. The bylines, by far, go to the men, as do the literary...
Read & DiscussWhat Is a Book?
From incunabula, codices, and scrolls, to books and beyond-a brief history of how humans have been doing their reading. The debate about the...
Read & DiscussThis Is Also What Foreclosure Looks Like
Some good news from Cleveland The best photo of 2008 showed an eviction in Cleveland and the media enjoys stories about the devastation in my...
Read & DiscussFifty Lines to Woo Your Lover
A cheat sheet of Valentine's Day poetry Valentine's Day is nigh. If you do not have time to hit Victoria's Secret, are broke, or eschew...
Read & DiscussThey Might Have Been Giants
Three lost classics that should have made it into the literary canon The snow is ascending up the wall, threatening to hit my kitchen...
Read & DiscussEnding the Tyranny of Expensive Textbooks
BookSwim gives students a Netflix-style alternative to buying exorbitant textbooks A few weeks ago I put in book orders for my Spring semester...
Read & DiscussThe Art of the Status Update
Facebook's Status Update as 21st-century literary form About a year ago, my undergraduates had to explain to me what they meant by "Facebook...
Read & DiscussWhy We Need to Paint Books Now
Richard Baker's books portraits When I first saw Richard Baker's portraits of books in the current issue of Poets & Writers magazine, I smiled,...
Read & DiscussThe Adventures of Jeff Smith
An old-fashioned epic becomes a new model for cartoonists. 2008 seems to be the breakout year for graphic novels, which have been slowly...
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