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by Regina Powers, Los Angeles Times
Although I am elated that many famlies are visiting my public library more frequently because schools send them, I am distubed at how infrequently parents and teachers are allowing young readers to choose what to read.
by Yusef Komunyakaa, Slate
by Jo Glanville, The Guardian
When publishers are too intimidated to print even novels that may offend, it shows how far we've lost our way on free speech.
by Bob Thompson, Washington Post
There are hard ways and easy ways to get ideas for books, and both were on display Saturday at the National Book Festival on the Mall.
by Daniel Alarcon, New Yorker
by Anne Carson, New Yorker
by Rosanna Warren, New Yorker
by Kent Nerburn, Zen Moments
We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware - beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.
by David McKie, The Guardian
Reference books may seem austere, but they can brim with charm and personality.
by Gene Weingarten, Washington Post
A: Because he had this column to fill.
by Stephanie Zacharek, Salon
Gorgeous, sure, but it was Paul Newman's sly spark that made us love him — and he never stopped reinventing himself.
by Dorothy Gallagher, New York Times
I mention Helene's death because she was not only my first editor, but the editor of my life.
by Jessa Crispin, The Smart Set
The (unnecessary) rise of the spiritual memoir.
by Joyce Wadler, New York Times
The latest boook by Susan Cheever, novelist, biographer and daughter of the late John Cheever, is a cautionary tome that chronicles her addiction to sex.
by Janet Maslin, New York Times
In her fifth book about ambitious, covetous, pampered New Yorkers, Candace Bushnell laments the decline of art, the bitchiness of gossip and the crass commercialization of publishing.
by Tim Kreider, Baltimore City Paper
Why what we pore over at 12 maybe the most important reading we ever do.
by C Thi Nguyen, Los Angeles Times
There are two kinds of fusion cooking. The first kind is self-conscious about its fusion; it exists in order to cross boundaries. But in Southern California, there's another kind of fusion cooking.
by John Ashbery, New Yorker
by Andrea Lee, New Yorker
by Joanna Weiss, Slate
How not to be the first contestant kicked off a reality show.
by Chris Wilson, Slate
Why can't science journalists just tell it like it is when it comes to particle physics?
by Andrew Gallix, The Guardian
Technology - the very stuff e-lit is made of - has turned out to be its Achilles heel.
by Jan Swafford, Slate
How The Rest is Noise changes our understanding of 20th-century music.
by David Biespiel, Slate
by Joanna Weiss, Boston Globe
"Fairy tale" may be our shorthand for castles and happy endings, but these classic stories have villians, too - nefarious witches, bloodthirsty wolves, stepmothers up to no good. And scholars have come to see the stories' dark elements as the source of their power, not to mention their persistence over the centuries.
by Tyrone Beason, Seattle Times
Cosmetologists and esthetists, like those being trained at Seattle's Greenwood Academy of Hair, rank somewhere between parents and lovers among the world's most dedicated validators and confidants.
by Tim Harford, Slate
Why it's dangerous to be a witch in a recession.
by Jack Handey, New York Times
In general, the easiest way to locate the Humor section in any bookstore is to go through the front entrance of the bookstore and to the farthest point from the entrance. That's where the Humor section will be.
by Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times
How the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times in 1910 shaped the city for the next 100 years.
by Jeanne Marie Laskas, GQ
On a $500 million man-made island in the frozen Arctic Ocean, just off the coast of a vast, uninhabitable tundra known as Alaska's North Slope, a pipeline begins. In temperatures that hover around forty-five degrees below zero, in perpetual darkness, a tight-knit band of roughnecks spends twelve hours a day, seven days a week, drilling down, down into the earth and pulling up precious crude. If you want to know how badly we need oil, here is your answer.
by Nate DiMeo, Slate
When audiobook casting goes terribly wrong.
by Joshua Kurlantzick, Boston Globe
In country after country, democratic reforms are in retreat. The surprising culprit: the middle class.
by Stephanie Cross, The Guardian
Experimental fiction can be terrific, of course, but it's not superior to conventional storytelling.
by Peter D. Kramer, Slate
David Lodge's touch wavers when the topic is aging.
by Julia Moskin, New York Times
Orange juice laced with anchovies is one example of the latest way major food companies are competing for health-conscious consumers: plugging one food into another and claiming the health benefits of both.
by Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times
After decades of obsessing about fat, calories and carbs, many dieters have made the unorthodox decision to simply enjoy food again.
by Neil deMause, Village Voice
Loot, loot, loot for the home team.
by David Barnett, The Guardian
A novel way to organise your boks is to use different titles to spell out new phrases.
by Maura Stanton, The Atlantic
by Ross Douthat, The Atlantic
It may be closer than you think.
by Rachel Cooke, The Guardian
Kate Rothko Prizel remembers the long and bitter court case, his brutal suicide and how she still mourns the loss of her father.
by Natalie Angier, New York Times
A host of new stuides suggests that the two number systems, the bestial and celestial, may be profoundly related, an insight with potentially broad implications for math education.
by Alex Clarke, Telegraph
Internet or not, writers will always be grateful for an astute editor.
by Peter Hessler, New Yorker
How the Chinese experienced the Olympics.
by Don Belt, photography by Ed Kashi, National Geographic Magazine
A new superhighway linking its four major cities is bringing old and new India into jarring proximity.
by Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times
A series of simple meal-time strategies can help even the pickiest eater learn to like a more varied diet.
by Chuck Leddy, Boston Globe
Novelist and Cambridge resident Joan Wickersham's deeply moving memoir seeks to comprehend the incomprehensible.
by Aleksandar Hemon, New Yorker
by Bob Dylan, New Yorker
by Bob Dylan, New Yorker
by Marilyn Hacker, New Yorker
by Zachary Pincus-Roth, Los Angeles Times
For screenwriters, the sheer ubiquitousness of the cellphone can be a nagging detail to account for — or a handy device on which to hang a plot point.
by Patricia E. Dempsey, Washington Post
Throughout her childhood, she could hear the foghorn of the lighthouse through her bedroom window. Now she had a chance to finally see it.
by Mick Sussman, New York Times
The state of the art in used-book selling these days seems to be less about connoisseurship than about database management.
by David Devoss, Smithsonian Magazine
In just four years, this 11-square-mile outpost on the coast of China eclipsed Las Vegas as gambling's world capital.
by Morgan Clendaniel, Good
Playgrounds became safer and less inspired at a time when kids needed them most—when competition for children's attention from video games and television meant that they provided the only outdoor playing time a child might get.
by Yasutaka Tsutsui, translated by Andrew Driver, Zoetrope
by Barbara Henning, Jacket
by Sara Dickerman, Slate
How your food needs will change as you get older.
by Kim Severson, New York Times
Marcella Hazan's husband, Victor, who has written every word of English in her cookbooks, has created the ultimate translation: her memoir, written by him in her voice.
by Patricia Cohen, New York Times
Maurice Sendak on the death of his longtime partner, his recent triple-bypass, and the celebration of his 80th birthday at the 92nd Street Y.
by Louise Radnofsky, Wall Street Journal
A financial crisis, a historic presidential campaign and a series of political scandals have scrambled how people understand the world in the past few years.
For some authors, that presents a ticklish problem.
by Justin Davidson, New York Magazine
As this last great building boom winds down, our architecture critic asks: Does the new see-through city look better or worse than the one it replaced?
by AC Grayling, New Humanist
Decreaing religious hegemony and rapidly increasing scientific and technological knowledge have gone pari passu during the last four centuries, in mutually reinforcing tandem: the less religion, the more science; the more science, the less religion. And this is a universal phenomenon.
by Laura Polley, Slate
by Alex Ross, New Yorker
How the classical concert took shape.
by Carrie Fountain, Swink
by Margaret Robertson, Seed
Why does a blockbuster video game that embraces biological evolutin resemble intelligent design?
by Carl Zimmer, New York Times
Exotic species reciee lots of attention and create lots of worry. But some researchers argue that attitudes about exotic species are too simplisitc. While some invasions are indeed devastating, they often do not set off extinctions. They can even spur the evolution of new diversity.
by Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian
The New Joy of Sex offers a woman's perspective for the first time.
by Wolfgang Kasper, Policy
This book asks big questions: Why are some societies rich and others poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution occur in the seventeenth century, in England? Why do some societies—in Africa, for example—find sustained growth so elusive?
by Tom Vanderbilt, Wilson Quarterly
The idea that made Hans Monderman most famous is that traditional traffic safety infrastructure—warning signs, traffic lights, metal railings, curbs, painted lines, speed bumps, and so on—is not only often unnecessary, but can endanger those it is meant to protect.
by Rob Stein, Washington Post
Scientists have for the first time established a link between a primitive, intuitive sense of numbers and performance in math classes, a finding that could lead to new ways to help children struggling in school.
by Thuku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal
"The ones that amuse me are the ones that make a drama — an ordeal — out of something pretty banal."
by Dahlia Lithwick, New York Times
It's a testament to our national confusion about the purpose of marriage that the courts can toggle this way between four or five rationales for such a union in a single judicial opinion, with little regard for any one coherent principle.
by Ron Rosenbaum, Slate
IN praise of the praise of poetry.
by James Trefil, Washington Post
The Black Hole Wars is as good an introduction as you're going to find to the strange world of black hole astrophysics. Add that to the chance to ride along as real scientists resolve a fundamental issue and you have the makings of a great read.
by Alison Flood, The Guardian
Sony has just released its Reader. It's slim, tan and a commuter magnet, but I want more.
by Mark Lawson, The Guardian
Carol Ann Duffy's work on violence is ideal for classroom discussion. It's a poem, not a memo.
by Thomas Rogers, Salon
Adaptations of foreign TV shows are not a new concept, by any means. But the sheer number of this year's imports suggests that the television industry is undergoing, if not a convulsive transformation, a major change in the way it finds its material.
by Frank Bruni, New York Times
As the New York restaurant world enters a characteristically busy fall season, what's most striking aren't the flasy openings but the strategic adjustments being made by restaurants that aren't taking their success, or for that matter their survival, for granted.
by Jonah Lehrer, Boston Globe
A wandering mind can do important work, scientists are learning - and may even be essential.
by Barry Goldensohn, Slate
by Seetha Narayan, Boston Globe
To take a photograph can be a passionate journey. If you've never felt that way about your impulse clicks of camera and cellphone, talk to Boston Globe veteran Bill Brett.
by Roger Pulvers, Japan Times
Perhaps the answer — and the key to capturing a poem's messages and signals in translation — lies in the word "voice." This would be my answer to my friend's question: that a poem has to speak to readers in the translated language with the same voice it does to readers of the original.
by Natalie Angier, New York Times
Do animals grieve like we do?
by Carl Zimmer, New York Times
By day, Thomas Near studies the evolution of fish, wading through streams in Kentucky and Mississippi in search of new species. By night, Dr. Near, an assistant professor at Yale, is a heavy-duty gamer, sterring tanks or playing football on his computer. This afternoon his two lives have come together.
by Ian Parker, New Yorker
Alec Baldwin's disappointment, undimmed by successs.
by Yusef Komunyakaa, New Yorker
by Alice Munro, New Yorker
I am convinced that my father looked at me, really saw me, only once. After that, he knew what was there.
by Mary Jo Bang, New Yorker
by Rolf Potts, The Believer
How one nearly forgotten 1920s publisher's "Little Blue Books" created an inexpensive mail-order information superhighway that paved the way for the sexual revolution, influenced the feminist and civil rights movements, and foreshadowed the age of information.
by Billy Frolick, Salon
This summer's buzzword implies that sitting on your couch can be an adventure. But even the smarmiest euphemism can't turn Paris Hilton into Paris, France.
by Christine Muhlke, New York Times
On Friday I was wondering whether Slow Food Nation, the four-day San Francisco event that aims to encourage Americans to come to the table, would turn out to be the Woodstock or the Lollapalooza of food. Today, I'm convinced that it's the Davos (minus Bono).
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