“Part of the allure of Bosnia for westerners, I think, has been the surprising nearness of the East. To put it more bluntly, and problematically: in Bosnia the East is tamed, less scarily dogmatic.” Elvis Bego draws a parallel with Madame Bovary at Bookslut.
“The pull of the East, of Islam”
a multitude of drops
There is a very long trailer for the Cloud Atlas movie, which comes out in the fall. Unfortunately, Kevin Bacon isn't in it.
Kindle Wins Christmas?
Amazon announced that on Christmas day it sold more Kindle ebooks than regular books (and that the Kindle is not the site's most popular gift ever). Chadwick Matlin outlines at The Big Money the reasons why the Christmas day surge in ebook sales don't matter. The New York Times suggests each new version of the Kindle may be getting worse, and separately dubs 2010 the "Year of the Tablet."
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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Far
“I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.” Jonathan Safran Foer believes that technology is making us more detached. Pair with The New Yorker’s essay on netiquette.
The Books Coming from Ukraine
Citing the cliché that people “only become interested in a country’s literature once we start bombing in” as his reason, Chad Post takes a close look at some recently published Ukrainian books.
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