Did you think the title of the most recent book you read could’ve been improved if it had been a bit more straightforward? Then Better Book Titles is for you. Among their more inspired retitlings: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Gay Jewish Magicians Kill Nazis), Blink (Everyone is Racist), and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (The First Book I’ve Read in Six Years).
Better Book Titles
Book Fixin’
Do you have books in need of binding repair? Do it yourself!
Is There Life on Pallas?
John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar isn’t the only vintage science fiction novel making waves this week. Andrew Joron takes a look at “German fantasist” Paul Scheerbart’s Lesabéndio – a 1913 novel that was recently reissued by the folks at Wakefield Press.
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Boo-gali
“Bengali children’s fiction’s limitless supply of ghost stories is matched by little other than its readers’ appetite for it,” writes Siddharthya Swapan Roy. “Anthologies dedicated to ghostly thrills come out with unfailing regularity and every publishing house that does not wish to upset its child readership pays due respects to ghosts and their stories.”
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Women Writing About War
Recommended Reading: Kayla Williams's overview of books about war written by women veterans. "Works have been published by women veterans from all four branches of service, officers and enlisted, active duty and reservists, and from multiple ethnic backgrounds. Their diverse voices can significantly deepen our understanding of both who volunteers to serve in today’s military and what they experience."
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A Conservative Estimate
While makers of the graph admit that it's no substitute for a real poll, according to a heatmap of political books purchased on Amazon in the United States, conservative books are more popular than their left-wing rivals. Another heatmap of note: a firm tracked the use of the F-bomb on twitter over the course of a day to see where America's foulest mouths are concentrated.
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Henry Miller: Asleep and Awake
The documentary about Tropic of Cancer author Henry Miller, Asleep and Awake (NSFW), was filmed almost entirely in Mr. Miller's bathroom. The filmmakers, according to the folks at Open Culture, "use[d] these bathroom walls as a gateway into his mind."
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“Insatiable Maw”
"In recent decades the traditional outlets for individual short stories have dwindled, with literary magazines closing or shrinking. But the Internet has created an insatiable maw to feed." Why both the Internet and electronic devices might be good for the short story.
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