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10 votes
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Brandon Sanderson: 'After a dozen rejected novels, you think maybe this isn’t for you'
9 votes -
Signs you're a Black character written by a White author
23 votes -
Frog and Toad (and me)
13 votes -
The weight of James Arthur Baldwin
7 votes -
Is anyone else a Neil Postman fan?
I eventually recommend Neil Postman's writing to anyone I can. These books are absolutely fantastic, especially Technopoly, though I'd also recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death and The End of...
I eventually recommend Neil Postman's writing to anyone I can. These books are absolutely fantastic, especially Technopoly, though I'd also recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death and The End of Education (pun in the title intended).
One of Neil Postman's big contributions to how I think was by explaining an extended notion of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Instead of trying to insist that different human languages have different ways of communication, Neil Postman makes the assertion that different media, books, oral communication, TV, radio, the internet, have world-views embedded into them. So, you will (almost) never find a serious philosophical discussion in a film. Books, being linear can afford to give a cursory examination, and the person reading can follow at their own pace, while film can't do that. However, films are better at communicating emotion, so the stories in film are more experience/emotion/in-the-moment driven. Postman's argument was better, so ignore the weaknesses in my summary. I'm just trying to give some flavor to the type of things he wrote, like he also predicted how people would communicate on the internet.
The thing which really stands out to me is how Neil Postman was just a good thinker. He wasn't a one hit wonder for ideas. I'd be willing to read his thoughts on just about anything, even if I disagree. So anyway, read him! You won't have any regerts.
5 votes -
Tracking down all of Isaac Asimov's books
10 votes -
Spend some time down the rabbit hole of author-as-gameshow contestant, from Herman Wouk to John le Carré
3 votes -
Algonquin Round Table: How the group of writers became a symbol of the roaring twenties
4 votes -
The case for Stanislaw Lem
10 votes -
One of Sweden's best-known authors, Per Olov Enquist, has died aged 85
8 votes -
Why authors are so angry about the Internet Archive’s Emergency Library
10 votes -
Growing up in Quarantineland: Childhood nightmares in the age of germs prepared me for coronavirus
6 votes -
Here’s a list of authors whose tours have been canceled due to coronavirus, if you’d like to support them by buying books
11 votes -
Clive Cussler, bestselling adventure novelist, dies aged 88
4 votes -
Nedim Yasar, a former gang leader who had turned his back on crime, was shot dead in Copenhagen just as a book about his life was published
6 votes -
James Joyce’s grandson and the death of the stubborn literary executor
7 votes -
Asimov at 100: From epic space operas to rules for robots, the prolific author’s literary legacy endures
9 votes -
Is France still at the center of the French-language literary world? Or, to ask a broader question, is there a center at all?
6 votes -
Jo Nesbø: ‘We should talk about violence against women’
4 votes -
William Gibson, the writer who invented ‘cyberspace’ – and possibly the most influential living sci-fi author – on the challenges of keeping up with a reality even stranger than fiction
16 votes -
Olga Tokarczuk – Nobel Lecture
4 votes -
Author and Norway princess's ex-husband Ari Behn dies aged 47
5 votes -
Jeff VanderMeer, the author of “Annihilation,” brings us fresh horrors with each new book. So why does he remain an optimist?
5 votes -
Protests grow as Peter Handke receives Nobel medal in Sweden – Turkey joined Albania and Kosovo in boycotting Tuesday's Nobel prize ceremony
5 votes -
GQ has selected their favorite books of 2019, and asked each book's author to make their own recommendation
5 votes -
How to live like Jane Austen
4 votes -
Karl Ove Knausgård is to become the sixth contributor to the Future Library, which collects works by contemporary authors that will remain unread until 2114
9 votes -
Is Tolkien's prose really that bad?
Recently I was reading through a discussion on Reddit in which Tolkien's writing and prose were quite heavily criticised. Prior to this I'd never seen much criticism surrounding his writing and so...
Recently I was reading through a discussion on Reddit in which Tolkien's writing and prose were quite heavily criticised. Prior to this I'd never seen much criticism surrounding his writing and so I was wondering what the general consensus here is.
The first time I read through The Lord of the Rings, I found myself getting bored of all the songs and the poems and the large stretches between any action, I felt that the pacing was far too slow and I found that I had to force myself to struggle through the book to get to the exciting parts that I had seen so many times in the films. Upon reading through The Lord of the Rings again recently my experience has been completely different and I've fallen in love with his long and detailed descriptions of nature, and the slower pacing.
Has anyone else experienced something similar when reading his works? Are there more valid criticisms of his prose that extend beyond a craving for the same high-octane action of the films?
13 votes -
Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo share Booker prize 2019
5 votes -
Stieg Larsson and the unsolved murder case of Olof Palme
11 votes -
How to be a professional author and not die screaming and starving in a lightless abyss
15 votes -
“This has to end. We cannot say it any clearer.” A guide to the decades-long familial dispute over John Steinbeck’s estate.
7 votes -
In "The Testaments", Margaret Atwood expands the world of "The Handmaid’s Tale"
8 votes -
Orwell knew: We willingly buy the screens that are used against us
10 votes -
Beloved author Toni Morrison has died at 88
18 votes -
Despite being a best-selling author, Jane Austen was paid very little
6 votes -
Eight crime writers who wrote other forms of literature, including literary novels, memoirs, and even works of history
7 votes -
Rebuilding Jane Austen’s library
6 votes -
Jo Nesbø, master of Norway noir, returns with his creepiest yet
5 votes -
Novelists have condemned the Staunch prize – for thrillers without violence against women – as a ‘gagging order’, after organisers said the genre could bias jurors
7 votes -
Sandra Boynton is tweaking some of her beloved children’s books. But why mess with perfection?
7 votes -
Romance novelists write about sex and pleasure. On the internet that makes them targets for abuse
9 votes -
Liu Cixin’s war of the worlds
12 votes -
How the hell has Danielle Steel managed to write 179 books?
13 votes -
1982 video interview with Asimov, Wolfe, and Ellison
9 votes -
A very happy 50th birthday to 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'
9 votes -
Of vices and rears; or why I've stopped reading Jane Austen
9 votes -
How Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go! became a ubiquitous (and cliché) graduation gift
4 votes -
How to write about Africa
6 votes