Reading fiction is good, according to the studies, because it makes you a more effective social agent. Which is pretty much what being able to read a train schedule does for you, too.
Category: publishing
Why It’s Not Important To Read Books Because “They’re Good For You”
“Just as I became truly comfortable with my body as soon as I gave up dieting and allowed my eating habits to be guided purely by the pleasure principle (gluttony and pleasure, I soon found out, are antithetical to one another), my reading life has improved immeasurably since I gave up trying to finish books that didn’t sustain my interest.”
Long-form Novels Are Back, Baby!
And by long-form, we mean 900 pages (and by back, we mean the millions of dollars offered during bidding wars for their contents).
The No-Guilt Guide To Quitting Bad Books
“If you are truly a reader, every time you put down one book it simply frees you up to engage with the next.”
How Do You Write A Gift Inscription On An Ebook?
“My worry is that the fine art of inscribing a book with a pertinent message for its recipient is starting to look decidedly peaky.”
Is Lying To Your Kids About Scary Books A Good Plan?
“Dead parents are gruesome, yes, but anyone who’s anyone in children’s literature has either been orphaned or abandoned; well-adjusted kids from stable two-parent homes don’t go on hero quests.”
Basically, The Word Police Are Just Wrong
Usage police periodically go so far as to claim that the word “basically” is mere filler, that it doesn’t even mean anything. Basically, this is nonsense.
Authors Reviewing Their Own Books? Thus It Has Ever Been (Even In The 1800s)
Reporting from London back to his native land in 1822, the American nationalist James Kirke Paulding claimed that nine of 10 reviews in British periodicals “originate in personal, political, and religious antipathies or attachments” and “it is almost as common for an author to puff his own book in the magazines, as for a quack doctor to be his own trumpeter in the newspapers.”
Lynn Coady Wins Canada’s Giller Prize For Hellgoing
The Cape Breton-born Edmonton resident receives the $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize for a short story collection praised by jurors Margaret Atwood, Esi Edugyan and Jonathan Lethem for its “keen and sympathetic wit”.
Marvel Comics To Introduce Muslim Girl Superhero
Next February will see the debut of Kamala Khan, the teenaged daughter of Pakistani immigrants to Jersey City, who is a devoted follower of the (currently female) Captain Marvel when she discovers her own superpowers.