Yi-Fen Chou and the Man Who Wore Her – You may be following the fallout from the revelation that one of the poets whose work is included in the Sherman Alexie edited volume of the Best American Poetry 2015 is a white man who assumed the pseudonym of a fictitious ... more >
E-Book Sales Fall After New Amazon Contract – Is anyone surprised? Or rather, does anyone really think that publishers care? Given traditional publishing’s reliance on the hardcover, what, precisely, is the incentive to encourage higher ebook sales? In fact, the comment below about higher sales of paper books suggests a belief ... more >
Yes, One Book Can Change Your Life, Even In Prison – Reginald Dwayne Betts Jr. is a poet. He is also a memoirist with an MFA and a third (and final) year student at Yale Law School. And he got his start reading and writing poetry in prison, where he ... more >
YouTube’s Rock Stars of Science Make a Splash at VidCon – Given the sexual assault scandals associated with VidCon, I was pleasantly surprised by the success of science bloggers and their popularity at VidCon. I would have been pretty excited to listen to Emily Graslie myself. With tens of millions ... more >
Happy Ever After: 100 Swoon-Worthy Romances – An interesting list that at the very least reflects the difficulty in making any kind of “best of” list. If that’s what this is. We get back, pretty quickly, to the question of what makes a Romance novel effective, and what “good” or “best” ... more >
Consumer groups say FCC conditions on AT&T-DirecTV merger fall short – Amazingly enough (aka not surprisingly), the Department of Justice has signaled that they don’t find the merger of AT&T and DirectTV “did not appear to be anti-competitive.” AT&T, which is purchasing DirecTV for $49 billion, has met with some conditions ... more >