Pages

Wednesday 22 August 2012

Late News: New Words, Spilled Ink, and Apple for Orange

Despite one additional day, I didn't quite enjoy the long Hari Raya (Eid ul-Fitr) weekend. But I didn't want the whole week off, since next week's a four-day week.

Anyway:

  • CNN pundit Fareed Zakaria was the latest to be snared in a plagiarism scandal. The blog Foreign Policy tries to figure out why. Zakaria was eventually reinstated at TIME and CNN after brief suspension, but he has resigned from his position at the board of Yale University.
  • Buenos Aires gives pensions to ageing writers, as GOP candidate pledges cuts to US arts.
  • Mob justice goes awry as authors shut down legit book lending site.
  • Tired of celebs touting quack cures and dubious science? Here are some fictional characters, promoting cures based on established science. What? Darth Vader's a fellow asthmatic? And Sauron uses OPTREX eye wash?
  • Some pleasures and pitfalls of online self-publishing. Because you can't have too many of such lists.
  • Coffee, cafés and coups: A Naguib Mahfouz novel and a café's role in Egypt's revolution.
  • How paperbacks transformed the way Americans (and us) read.
  • When writing can kill you: AL Kennedy's hard lesson.
  • "Imma sexting in mah man-cave, stuffing mah brains wi' Kanye's newest earworm of a track, y'all." New words in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
  • Are these travel guides - "clotted with historical revisionism, factual errors, and a toxic combination of Orientalism and pathological self-loathing" - shilling for dictators? Maybe not.
  • "Prestige-free zone": Has the young adult genre become a woman's world?
  • Apple may emerge as the new sponsor for Orange Prize for Fiction. Let the fruity puns fly.
  • A reader laments the disappearance of great books.
  • Follow the travails of a literary débutante - if you really must.
  • Blogger/writer doesn't trust online book reviews.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Got something to say? Great!