Ewan Morrison thinks so. In a piece in The Guardian called “Are books dead, and can authors survive?” Morrison predicts that ebooks will kill paper books within 25 years. He provides numbers: Barnes & Noble now sells three times more digital books than physical books. Amazon sells 242 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks. Also, baby […]
Elizabeth Gumport knows her stuff. That’s obvious from her piece in n + 1, “Against Reviews.” But that’s not why I printed a copy (yes, I am a Luddite) and carried it around to think about. It’s because Gumport asks a brilliant and necessary question. Why must we read strangers? I seriously love this question […]
I have no idea if this still works, or why anyone would want to make use of it, but here it is. If you are really, truly lonely or bored, and just want someone, anyone to talk to you – and aren’t particular – this used to be foolproof. I know from personal experience that […]
Nevertheless, this Weekly Standard piece by Roger Kimball is worth reading. In “The Great American Novel: Will there ever be another?” Kimball argues that the novel has lost its former cultural relevance in part because the “character of culture” has changed. I happen to agree. I don’t happen to care. The novel went the way […]
Yes, I know it’s the Huffington Post. But this gem caught my attention, from a truly bizarre article called “12 Books You NEED on Your Bookshelf”: But if you’re going to buy hard covers with at least one eye on the opinions of visiting friends and relatives, these are our choices of the titles you […]
