From The Guardian: A bad night is not always a bad thing,” wrote the late science fiction author Brian Aldiss. A long-time insomniac, he appears to have been searching for the silver lining of a condition that, in chronic form, can suck the lifeblood from you. One does not have to try hard to build the … Read more
From The Intercollegiate Studies Institute: Earlier this year, the Modern Library published a list styled The Hundred Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century. A list of significant books can make a compelling statement about how we are to understand an age. In judging the quality of a book, one necessarily judges the perception and … Read more
From Writers Helping Writers: Every person or character, at any given time, is in a particular mood. Generally, mood is a person’s state of mind, but it’s more than that. Mood can also describe the disposition of a collective of people, a certain time in history, or the ether of a place. Regardless of what … Read more
From Writer Unboxed: It’s firefly season in my part of the world. As I write this, it’s dusk, and my front yard is just starting to light up. For the next few hours the fireflies will flash their little butts at a much higher concentration in front of my house compared to my neighbors. I … Read more
From Chemistry World: A little old lady knits while she talks about the dangers of prescription drugs. Elsewhere, a book is carelessly left open on the page that describes the extraction of ricin. In another house, small colourless crystals are found scattered over a tea tray – they look like sugar but they could be … Read more
From The New York Times (9 February 2008): On Friday, a lawyer named Anthony Falzone filed his side’s first big brief in the case of Warner Bros. Entertainment and J.K. Rowling v. RDR Books. Falzone is employed by Stanford Law School, where he heads up the Fair Use Project, which was founded several years ago … Read more
From The Center for Art Law: Since the opening of his retrospective at The Whitney Museum of American Art, From A to B and Back Again, Andy Warhol is the talk of the town… again. One of the Museum’s facades is now covered with poppy flowers, and its fifth floor is dominated by a rainbow … Read more
From Woman Writers, Women’s Books A few years ago, someone commented on my Facebook post, “Sweta, you must be ready to retire now that your poetry book has become an Amazon bestseller”. According to this person, my royalty payments, from my poetry collection, would keep me smoothly sailing for the rest of life. I laughed … Read more
From Medium: It used to be that the years would pile up, one on top of the other. “Where does the time go!” we cried, palms to cheeks. Now, it’s the decades piling. Decades are laying dusty atop one another like so many old files, stuffed and disorganized and in need of sorting. Ten years … Read more
From Quartz: It is a heartwarming story: In spite of the endless onslaught of digital content, American readers have collectively put down their screens and decided to embrace once more that beloved tactile rectangular prism that reminds us, with its weight at the bottom of our bags, of its immeasurable heft. Since 2015, major news … Read more