Orphaned protagonists are so common that an online encyclopaedia of narrative tropes has more than 25 pages on orphan-related themes, including ‘Street Urchin’ (Oliver Twist), ‘Disappeared Dad’ (Forrest Gump) and ‘Doorstop Baby’ (Harry Potter). – Aeon
Category: words
A.I. Software Is Learning To Write Prose — Could It Get Good Enough To Write A ‘New Yorker’ Piece?
John Seabrook does a deep dive into how artificial intelligence programs learn the rules of English grammar and syntax and teach themselves how to predict what you, at the keyboard, might write next — and even, eventually, to write the way you do. Then he and a computer scientist feed a program the entire New Yorker nonfiction archive as a dataset to learn from, and they ask it to try, based on the opening, to complete a real New Yorker article. – The New Yorker
African Women Authors Make Historical Fiction Their Own
“African historical fiction is far from a new genre – is there a more globally known work of African fiction, after all, than Chinua Achebe’s 1958 classic story of Nigeria at the moment of British colonization, Things Fall Apart? But in recent years, the genre has been reinvented by a new generation of African writers. And this time around, most of them are women.” – The Christian Science Monitor
Does Putting Students Into Reading Levels Discourage Reading?
“Quantifiable measurements give students, teachers and administrators the confidence and assurance of “progress”: There is a sense of comfort in advancing from one designated level to the next. But reading is not a science. When we place significant value on quantifiable measures, we also might be pushing readers away from an intrinsic love of reading — and ignoring the great complexity of literature that is simply immeasurable.” – Washington Post
Readying For New Controversies Around Nobel Literature Prize
The revamped panel at the Swedish Academy who will hand out the Nobel Literature prizes Thursday for both 2018 and 2019 would relish arguments about the winners, rather than intrigue about the #MeToo scandal that forced the institution to suspend the prize last year. – Yahoo! (AP)
A Worldwide War On Books
Wherever authoritarian regimes are growing in strength, from Brazil, to Hungary, to the Philippines, literature that expresses any kind of political opposition is under a unique, renewed threat. Books that challenge normative values, especially those with L.G.B.T. themes, have been hit especially hard. – The New York Times
The Secret To Successfully Shopping In Used Bookstores
There’s only one big rule: Stop expecting specific books; surrender to the stacks, and enjoy. – Literary Hub
A Court Denies Audible’s Request For A Settlement Conference In The Captions Case
Audible may be trying to get away from this case – but publishers are ready to wade right in. “Captions is a feature that scrolls a few words of an AI-generated transcription along with a digital audiobook as it plays in the Audible app. Publishers say the program is infringing, and have moved for a preliminary injunction that would bar Audible from using the publishers’ works in the program until their copyright claim is resolved.” – Publishers Weekly
The Vision Of James Baldwin’s Last Two Works
Though they were shadowed by AIDS, the two works might feel contemporary in 2019. “Baldwin’s primary theme is described by the author thusly: ‘Forays, frontiers, and flags are useless. Nobody can go home anymore.'” – Literary Hub
Supermarkets Are Taking Out Newspaper And Magazine Racks
Print? What is that? “What was once seen as a tool to pull in daily customers is increasingly seen as something taking up valuable floor and counter space.” – Nieman Lab