Bookstores and libraries in the future

Consider the hub: "Can the bookstores and libraries of this world stay viable and relevant in this age of e-downloads? I think they can. But they need to expand their definition of business a little if they’re going to do so. One clue as to how this may evolve can be found in the way other businesses are updating themselves these days. And in my news feed these days, the big buzzword has been the ‘hub.’ " More...

Fiction is dead?

The L.A. Times rises to the occasion.

"Put down that dragon tattoo girl. Stop catching up with Bree Tanner. You don't need any help from Kathryn Stockett, or to chew your fingernails through a hunger game. Forget about the latest from Scott Turow or David Mitchell or Charlaine Harris or Paul Auster or Rick Riordan or Stephen King. Novels are over. Fiction is dead. Here we go again." More...

To Kill a Mockingbird not a classic?

We say, draw your own conclusions.

"It's time to stop pretending that 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is some kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American literature. Its bloodless liberal humanism is sadly dated, as pristinely preserved in its pages as the dinosaur DNA in 'Jurassic Park.' " More...

The list of summer reading lists

(Via) Flavorwire has aggregated pretty much everybody's summer reading lists. If you can't find something on one of these, you might want to consider watching TV instead.

John Updike's archives

The article in the NY Times is fascinating, about a young writer fighting the establishment, and learning his craft.

“Updike’s archive may be the last great paper trail,” Adam Begley, a critic and literary journalist now at work on a biography of Updike, said in an e-mail message. “Anyone interested in how a great writer works will find here as full an explanation as we’re likely to get.” More...

Neglected classics

NeglectedBooks.com brings us an interesting list, an initiative from Graham Greene in the 1940s to reprint forgotten recent masterpieces. One or two of these are far from neglected nowadays, but one wonders about the rest. Link.

Slow reading

In my previous publishing job many years ago, the corporation brought in speed reading instructors to help us do our work more quickly. It took me months to unlearn what they taught us! And now slow reading has new proponents.

"You see schools where reading is turned into a race, you see kids on the stopwatch to see how many words they can read in a minute," he said. "That tells students a story about what reading is. It tells students to be fast is to be good." Newkirk is encouraging schools from elementary through college to return to old strategies such as reading aloud and memorization as a way to help students truly "taste" the words. He uses those techniques in his own classroom, where students have told him that they've become so accustomed from flitting from page to page online that they have trouble concentrating while reading printed books. More...