Category: words

Here’s why you should do that: “Your interest in a title will indicate to booksellers that it’s worth checking out! Maybe they’ll read it. Maybe they’ll love it and give it table space up front and hand-sell it to everyone who walks in the door.” – Literary Hub

Thomas Morton came to Massachusetts with the Puritans in 1624, but he was there strictly on business. What’s more, he didn’t fear the surrounding landscape as the devil’s dwelling place, he loved it and the Native Americans who lived there. He was a dandy, and one year he even (gasp) put up a maypole. Morton and the Puritans despised each other, and when he let them have it in his New English Canaan, they promptly banned it. – Atlas Obscura

The first female writers in the kingdom have generally been thought to be Marie de France in the 12th century and Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich in the 14th. But scholar Diane Watt argues in a new book that there were Englishwomen producing serious prose and poetry as early as the 8th century — and that much of their work was “overwritten” by men. – The Guardian

“In this guilty-until-proven-innocent cancel culture, where everyone is condemned to death or to a lifetime of unemployment based on an accusation that’s 12 years old, is criminal,” Judith Regan says. – Washington Post

Planet Word isn’t the first to tackle language and reading in a museum format — there’s Mundolingua in Paris, as well as language museums in Toronto and the Netherlands, among others — and it’s not the first to use high-tech games and displays to engage visitors in its subject. But it’s the rare museum that combines both. – Washington Post

Leslie Jamison considers “the enduring appeal of the afflicted woman — especially the young, beautiful, white afflicted woman: our favorite tragic victim, our repository of rarefied, elegiac sadness” — and considers other approaches, both those of other sorts of women writers to suffering and those to life and its misfortunes that don’t focus on despondence. – The New York Times Book Review

“The Justice Department is going on the offensive against the anonymous author of A Warning, telling them in a letter obtained by CNN Business that he or she “may be violating ‘one or more nondisclosure agreements’ by writing the anti-Trump book. The author’s publisher is rejecting the argument and saying the book will be released as scheduled. And the author’s agents are accusing the government of trying to unmask the author.” – CNN

The works have been organised into themed categories, such as identity, adventure and love, sex and romance. – BBC

“It’s not gossipy, cosy or cliquey,” observes long-time contributor Alan Bennett. But, in a mostly productive way, it is cliquey. It has always had favourites and has nurtured them. With pages catching the work of writers including Lorna Sage and Jenny Diski, this celebratory volume looks like a justification of that habit. – The Guardian