Category: words

Just two years after her debut novel was published, Roanhorse has been racking up awards and praise in the science fiction/fantasy field, even drawing comparisons to George R.R. Martin and N.K. Jemisin. But she draws on Diné (Navajo) myth and legends as source material, and she herself is Diné only by marriage (her people were from the New Mexico pueblos); while some Diné are thrilled by her work and her success, others have attacked her furiously for appropriation. – Vulture

No, Atlas Shrugged doesn’t count as literature, and neither do Ann Coulter and Dinesh D’Souza. “To define Right-wing literature is to ask what literature is and what it’s for, but the most ready-to-hand answers (beauty, truth, empathy, expression) are incongruous to conservatism’s means, if not to the perverse utopianism of its final objectives.” – Aeon

The difference between autofiction and a “loosely” autobiographical novel, broadly speaking, is the difference between Amis’s new book and one he published ten years ago, “The Pregnant Widow.” Both tell the story of a middle-aged baby boomer looking back on a formative erotic encounter that took place in the nineteen-seventies, during the heyday of the sexual revolution. – The New Yorker

Diaries come from estate sales and garage sales, from where they get bought and sold on eBay or elsewhere online. Some buyers read them as a series on their YouTube channels; others collect them for more altruistic reasons. “Although the trend is undeniably voyeuristic, many collectors have a grander purpose. Polly North is the 41-year-old director of the Great Diary Project. Since 2007, she has rescued more than 10,000 of them.” – The Observer (UK)

It’s not easy out here for a novelist. “Good political satire should be imbued with the spirit of speaking truth to power. But what does that concept mean when the powerful are impervious to truth telling?” – Washington Post

A jeweler started collecting autographs when he was a teenager. Eight presidents, many famous writers, Thomas Edison, and Sarah Bernhardt later, Lafayette Cornwell’s book was full – and a mystery. “How Cornwell organized the signatures in the book is as unclear as how he obtained so many.” – The New York Times

Before the pandemic, indie bookstores were reviving to the tune of hundreds more per year. Now they’re closing, about one per week, and as a certain online behemoth pushed a certain discount deal, locals are sharpening their stilettos – and asking for help. – The New York Times

Proper referencing is important; it creates a breadcrumb trail for your reader so that your footsteps can be followed. It means providing your academic genealogy and giving credit for ideas you’ve adopted. It means that your factual assertions can be verified and it works to keep us all operating in good faith. If you make an honest mistake, it means that your reader can steadily work their way back along the path to find out where you took the wrong fork. – History Today

Historian Richard M. Eaton argues that there are two languages whose epic literature, poetry, and corpus of law, ethics, and philosophy molded the civilization of the subcontinent and its peoples. The first, obviously, was Sanskrit. The second was, when it arrived, every bit as foreign as English and came to be used as widely and in similar ways. In fact, by the 19th century India had produced a major body of literature in this language, as well as far more dictionaries than its native country had. – Literary Hub