In a sparkling, beautifully illustrated social history, Skirts traces the shifting roles of women over the twentieth century through the era’s most iconic and influential dresses. While the story of women’s liberation has often been framed by the growing acceptance of pants over the twentieth century, the most important and ... more >
Brexit: what next? – Neill Denny’s pro and con consideration of Brexit’s likely effect on the book industry. Some of his pros are a little dicey (the ‘we’re masters of the English-speaking world’ angle, for example), but certainly it’s true that disruption makes room for change, both positive and negative. Still, ... more >
Women Swept The 2015 Nebula Awards – So women took almost all the major Nebula Awards, including Novel (Naomi Novik), Novella (Nnedi Okorafor), Novelette (Sarah Pinsker), Short Story (Alyssa Wong), and YA (Fran Wilde). Take that, Puppies? The science fiction world has had its share of drama with the Hugo Awards ... more >
Against all odds, print books are on the rise again in the US – I’m starting to think that most of the surprise around the persistence of print books is coming from those who are most afraid of its demise, and this Quartz article is a good example of that. What’s ... more >
Think you’re reading the news for free? New research shows you’re likely paying with your privacy – Two University of Pennsylvania scholars tracked the online trackers to demonstrate the extent to which we are subject to the kind of tracking that allows you to see the items you were viewing on Amazon that ... more >
Amazon’s first brick-and-mortar store: One big ad for the Amazon app – Contrary to the piece in the Seattle Times I posted yesterday on the new Amazon Bookstore, Ars Technica’s coverage suggests that this isn’t just a bookstore, as Amazon apparently wants its customers to believe. There are a lot of photos ... more >