In The Atlantic, Johnathan A. Knee writes about how curation and aggregation can be more profitable than content creation. That is the idea behind BookLamp, a new search engine based on books’ content and writing style, not sales data. “At times, being able to ignore the marketing data can be good for the recommendation,” explains CEO Aaron Stanton.
The Pandora of Books
J.G. Ballard Geocoded
The comprehensive list of locations in J.G. Ballard’s fiction has been geocoded. Click on a location to view the relevant text, such as Memories of the Space Age in Vancouver or Rushing to Paradise in Malawi.
Tales of the Library
“The reality of being a librarian is that it’s hardly ever about sitting down and it has absolutely nothing to do with peace and quiet.” Lit Hub launched Tales of the Library, a new bimonthly column, by Kristen Arnett. From our archives: an essay about libraries and homelessness.
More Elmore Leonard on the Way
Although we’re still mourning the death of Elmore Leonard, we might have another book from him. His son, Peter Leonard, plans to finish his father’s 46th novel, Blue Dreams. Expect more of Leonard’s favorite federal marshal, Raylan Givens.
Writing Without Rain
“We don’t yet know how to make it rain. But increasingly, we may be talking about what to do when the rain doesn’t come.” Anna North writes for The New York Times about literature in the age of drought.
Type Setting
In a clip The Atlantic calls “technology porn for book lovers,” you can see how manuscripts became books in the 1940s.
First Novel Prize Longlist
The Center for Fiction has released the longlist for the First Novel Prize. The Girls by Emma Cline (see our review) and What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell (see our review) are among the novels to make the cut.