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+4 +1
How Wild Was Wild Bill Hickok? A Biographer Separates Life From Legend
Tom Clavin’s “Wild Bill” details the life of a legendary gunfighter whose real name wasn’t even Bill.
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+41 +5
Betty Ballantine, who helped popularize modern paperback, dies at 99
She and her husband expanded the market for science fiction and other genres through such blockbusters as “The Hobbit” and “Fahrenheit 451.”
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+12 +3
Want to know what China's thinking? Look to its science fiction
Aliens, robo-nannies and folding cities: A new wave of Chinese science fiction authors offer a unique perspective on the country, and the future of technology.
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+14 +2
Why E-books Cannot Kill Print Books?
After years of sales growth, major publishers reported a fall in their e-book sales for the first time this year, introducing new doubts about the potential of e-books in the publishing industry. A Penguin executive even admitted recently that the e-books hype may have driven unwise investment, with the company losing too much confidence in “the power of the word on the page.”
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+1 +1
Best Books For Twenty Somethings: 10+ Books On Money And Life
Are you looking for a great read? Here are 10+ of the best books for twenty somethings on personal finance, business, personal development and more.
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+12 +1
LA Times demands that reporters sign away rights to books, movies and other works they create while working at the paper
The LA Times Guild has been negotiating a new contract with the newspaper, but has hit a wall thanks to an unprecedented demand from the paper's owners: they want writers to sign away the rights to nonfiction books, novels, movies and other works they create separate from their reporting for the paper. The newspaper is also demanding the right to use reporters "byline, biography and likeness" to market these works.
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+23 +8
800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices
Download 800 free eBooks to your Kindle, iPad/iPhone, computer, smart phone or ereader. Collection includes great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, including works by Asimov, Jane Austen, Philip K. Dick, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Neil Gaiman, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf & James Joyce. Also please see our collection 900 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free, where you can download more great books to your computer or mp3 player.
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+18 +5
The tiny library bringing books to remote villages
“Without a book, so often the child is alone,” says Antonio La Cava. The retired schoolteacher converted his three-wheeled van into a mobile library, the Bibliomotocarro. Driving the hills and mountains of Basilicata, Italy, La Cava is able to reach children in remote villages like San Paolo Albanese, which only has two children of primary school age. “I was strongly worried about growing old in a country of non-readers.” La Cava believes that it’s important to spread the joy of literature to as many children as possible: “carrying out such action has a value, not only social, not only cultural, but has a great ethical meaning.”
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+23 +5
Medieval book coffer shows appetite for mobile reading 'is nothing new'
Bodleian acquires rare box dated to late 1400s, saying it reveals preoccupation with accessing information on the move is centuries-old
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+17 +3
Meet the Guardian of Grammar Who Wants to Help You Be a Better Writer
Benjamin Dreyer sees language the way an epicure sees food. And he finds sloppiness everywhere he looks.
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+21 +6
Why '1984' Isn't Banned in China
Censorship in the country is more complicated than many Westerners imagine.
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+22 +6
Book sales are up this year over last year, and physical books are thriving
It’s a tale as old as time, or, at least, the internet: None of us are reading any more, the physical book is dead, Amazon has killed the independent bookstore, and it’s all only going to get worse. But this year, the story looks like just that—a fiction. We are buying books—especially the kind with physical pages—and we’re doing so, increasingly, in well-loved indie bookstores.
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+14 +3
Sulky, Cynical 'Murderbot' Is One Of Sci-Fi's Most Human Characters
I picked up All Systems Red on a Wednesday morning, meaning to read for five minutes, maybe ten. I'd picked it because there was a mean-looking robot on the cover and, obviously, I have a weakness for robot stories. Also, because it had the word "Murderbot" right there under the picture. All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries.
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+11 +2
How to responsibly get rid of the stuff you’ve decluttered
Here are some sites to check out, depending on what you want to dispose of and how you want to do it.
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+30 +2
In France, Comic Books Are Serious Business
At the Angoulême International Comics Festival, there was a sense that the best days for comic books may be yet to come — in the French-speaking world, at least.
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+2 +1
The Gay History of America’s Classic Children’s Books
From “Frog and Toad” to “Where the Wild Things Are,” many of the most enduring 20th-century titles share a secret language of queer compassion.
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+33 +12
How the CIA Helped Shape the Creative Writing Scene in America
In May of 1967,” writes Patrick Iber at The Awl, “a former CIA officer named Tom Braden published a confession in the Saturday Evening Post under the headline, ‘I’m glad the CIA is ‘immoral.’” With the hard-boiled tone one might expect from a spy, but the candor one may not, Braden revealed the Agency’s funding and support of all kinds of individuals and activities, including, perhaps most controversially, in the arts. Against objections that so many artists and writers were socialists, Braden writes, “in much of Europe in the 1950’s [socialists] were about the only people who gave a damn about fighting Communism.”
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+26 +7
11,000 Digitized Books From 1923 Are Now Available Online at the Internet Archive
Whether your interest is in winning arguments online or considerably deepening your knowledge of world cultural and intellectual history, you will be very well-served by at least one government agency from now into the foreseeable future.
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+22 +7
Crashing author earnings 'threaten future of American literature'
A major survey of American authors has uncovered a crash in author earnings described as “a crisis of epic proportions” – particularly for full-time literary writers, who are “on the verge of extinction”. Surveying its membership and that of 14 other writers’ organisations in what it said was the largest survey of US authors’ earnings ever conducted, the Authors Guild reported that the median income from writing-related work fell to a historic low in 2017 at $6,080 (£4,760), down 42% from 2009.
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+22 +4
'Less Than Human': The Psychology Of Cruelty
During the Holocaust, Nazis referred to Jews as rats. Hutus involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsis cockroaches. Slave owners throughout history considered slaves subhuman animals. In Less Than Human, David Livingstone Smith argues that it's important to define and describe dehumanization, because it's what opens the door for cruelty and genocide.
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+25 +3
Buy a Copy of Fahrenheit-451 That Can Only Be Read If It’s on Fire
Graphic design studio Super Terrain’s edition of Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi classic Fahrenheit-451 took the internet by storm, thanks to a video showing how its all-black pages become readable text when exposed to an open flame. (This will, and quite possibly should, also work with a hair dryer or something else not completely on fire.) And now, for only $451 — get it? — you can preorder one to keep on a specially-heated shelf in your home! If you have $451 to drop on an artist’s book, we figure you could have custom heated shelves.
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+20 +4
Guide to the classics: The Water Margin, China's outlaw novel
In The Water Margin, first put to paper in the 14th century, local injustice is the rule, and defence against cruel local authority is a matter of vengeance, stratagem, and violence
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+14 +4
The 25 Greatest Science Fiction Tropes, Ranked
What qualities must a book have to be considered science fiction? Genre categories can be helpful in guiding us toward works that we might like, or just are in the mood to read, but those definitions can be slippery, and many of the very best books defy conventions and upend expectations.
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+14 +2
Michelle Obama's 'Becoming' has the longest run atop Amazon since 'Fifty Shades'
"Becoming" by Michelle Obama is not just one of the best-selling books of the past year — it is one of the hottest titles of the decade. The inspirational memoir by the former first lady has been on sale for more than two months, yet it is still No. 1 on Amazon's constantly updated list of best-selling books. Amazon said "Becoming" enjoyed the longest streak at No. 1 for any book since "Fifty Shades of Grey" came out in 2012.
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0 +1
Financial Freedom Book Review: The Must Read Personal Finance Book Of 2019
This Financial Freedom Book Review highlights why it's a must-read personal finance book in 2019. Grant empowers readers to live a rich life on their terms.
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+37 +9
What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
On the ineffable magic of four little manuscripts of Old English poetry
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+20 +9
70 Philosophy Books Everyone Should Read
Why am I here? How can I live a good life? What does it mean to have a mind and be a person? Since the days of antiquity, philosophers have puzzled over fundamental questions like these that sit at the very heart of our lived experience and interactions with the world. Solving these problems is not merely about increasing our knowledge of the world, to fill up academic textbooks and sit on library shelves, but to impart wisdom to aid us as we navigate through life's uncertainties and its profoundest mysteries.
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+29 +7
Pretentious, impenetrable, hard work ... better? Why we need difficult books
This year’s Booker-winner Milkman has been criticised for being challenging. But are we confusing readability with literary value?
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+25 +4
The 10 Best Science Fiction Books of 2018
It’s been a wild year for science fiction enthusiasts, as real life continues looking more like something out of an Arthur C. Clarke novel. Case in point: we just sent a robot to Mars and received a photo from it 8 minutes later. Here are our 10 favorite sci-fi books of 2018, from small-press debuts to Big Five bestsellers.
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+23 +4
Michelle memoir sells two million copies in two weeks
The publishing phenomenon of the fall and now Michelle Obama's memoir has sold more than two million copies in North America in two weeks.
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+17 +4
Tuk tuk library brings joy of books to Jakarta's poorest children
The mobile library bringing books to children in some of Jakarta's poorest neighbourhoods.
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+25 +4
Why I’m into meditation
Bill Gates reviews “The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness” by author Andy Puddicombe.
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+31 +7
Is Listening to a Book the Same Thing as Reading It?
A few years ago, when people heard I was a reading researcher, they might ask about their child’s dyslexia or how to get their teenager to read more. But today the question I get most often is, “Is it cheating if I listen to an audiobook for my book club?” Audiobook sales have doubled in the last five years while print and e-book sales are flat. These trends might lead us to fear that audiobooks will do to reading what keyboarding has done to handwriting...
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+16 +5
The Contested Legacy of Atticus Finch
Only Jesus made his father more famous. Harper Lee’s father was actually named Amasa, but, by the end of his life, he was answering to “Atticus Finch,” a reflection of how closely the character was modelled on him and how wildly well known his fictional doppelgänger had become. When “To Kill a Mockingbird” was published, in 1960, it instantly—and seemingly irrevocably—entered the canon of American literature...
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+16 +5
Six ways to be kind to your bookseller this Christmas
It’s the time of year when the sanctuary of the bookstore transforms into a battlefield. Here’s how to make life easier on both sides of the counter