From The New Yorker, twilight of the books: What will life be like if people stop reading? Caleb Crain investigates. From Literary Review of Canada, books you should read that you shouldn’t read: Ten contributors warn of “classic” books with over-sized reputations. The Americans go for self-help books, the French buy unreadable philosophy books and the British buy books filled with trivia. How often do you bother looking up an unfamiliar word, and should writers make us reach for our dictionaries? Four years ago, James Meek vowed to learn every alien word he encountered, and discovered poetry in obscurity. A proud day for geeks everywhere: Here are Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year 2007. Mnemony clever ways to remember stuff: An excerpt from I Before E (Except After C): Old-School Ways to Remember Stuff by Judy Parkinson.
