Brijit takes “the world’s best long-form content and boil it down to 100 words. Brijit abstracts summarize, review and rate to make it easy for you to choose what to read, listen to and watch.”
Core sources include The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Wired, ESPN magazine, the Economist, This American Life, Marketplace, The NYT Magazine, [...]
at The New York Times‘ Sunday Book Review Reading Room. First up: War and Peace. (via RA Online)
Richard and Judy are launching a children’s bookclub on their channel 4 show, hoping to inspire a love of reading in young children: “School pupils helped producers select eight books for readers aged five and above, to feature on the TV show.”
The books are:
Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort
Poppy and Max and [...]
Sarah Statz Cords at The Reader’s Advisor Online Blog focuses on mysteries featuring paranormal detectives: “These mysteries … ‘blend the detective story with elements of speculative fiction; particularly science fiction or horror. The detectives often have supernatural powers, or may be witches or vampires.’” She recommends a few titles; more are listed here.
** Geek alert **
Amazon has text stats that measure ‘average words per sentence‘ and ‘% complex words.” Non-fiction author Steven Johnson graphs his books’ text stats against those of Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink), Steven Pinker (How The Mind Works, The Stuff of Thought), Seth Godin (The Dip, Small is the New Big), [...]
The Guardian Arts blog takes on the sport of boxing in literature: “Literature and boxing shouldn’t go together. One is concerned with refining our consciousness; the other with trying to clobber someone into unconsciousness as artfully and as swiftly as possible. Yet of all sports writing it is boxing that seems to have inspired some [...]
Salon surveys the books written by all the 2008 candidates for U.S. President. Apparently all but one candidate (Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.?) has written and published a book.
Among the titles are A Prayer for America by Dennis Kucinich (”Have you texted Peace 73223? Do you advocate the abolition of all nuclear weapons? Are you [...]
Congrats to English writer (born in Persia/Iran) Doris Lessing, who at almost age 88 is the oldest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, which “usually goes to authors in their 50s and 60s.” Not only is she old, but she’s female, and only 11 women have won the prize since its inception in 1901. [...]
Per Book Standard today, “Oprah Winfrey has chosen Love In The Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as the next choice for her book club. … Love In The Time of Cholera, which is published by Vintage, a Random House imprint, was originally published in the U.S. in 1988 and is about a love [...]
Three pieces recently about Christian publishing:
>> Halo to Christian profits in the Telegraph (24 Sept.): Although sales in the UK of Christian books have almost doubled in 10 years, from £60m [$122 million] 10 years ago to £110m [$224 million] now, chain bookstores, like Waterstone’s, “don’t take the category seriously or stock a wide [...]