Egyptian Youth Save The Library of Alexandria
For me, one of the best parts of my day is reading with my son–already, I can tell he values books by the way he carries them to me and can spend a full 45 minutes reading. Yet books are undervalued in the everyday world—in 2007, The New Yorker published a particularly dispiriting piece, The Twilight of Books. The author, Caleb Crain, cites several studies, almost all of which point to the depressing notion that not only is literacy decreasing, but the appreciation of a good book...
Read MoreNew Year, New Site
Much like writing in a pretty notebook, I write better when I love the look of my blog. I’ve been wanting to play with it for some time now but haven’t had the spare hours to figure out what I wanted, particularly since I’m terribly indecisive. With every new page I read on the interwebs I find another great design I want! One of my goals for the new year is to blog more, and get involved in the more social aspects of the internet. After all, it’s hard to write about...
Read MorePopMatters Best Books of 2010: Behind the Scenes
End of year lists are fluid; the best book you read in January may not make a list made in December, even if it is, in many ways, a better book than one you read in November. Stellar prose, tight plotting, even memorable characters are not enough to keep a book in mind for three months, let alone 12. This may seem harsh, but for a book to truly belong on a Best Of list, it has to meet one extra, often forgotten criterion: it must be engaging. “Best books” must capture the reader on not just...
Read MoreAt PopMatters: Where Are Barnes & Noble’s Nooks for Nook Readers?
I have a new-ish piece over @ PopMatters on B&N, Amazon, and the power of the brick & mortar store. Click through to read more! Barnes & Noble has one big advantage over Amazon, Sony, Apple, and pretty much every other e-reader out there: brick and mortar bookstores. Sure, the Kindle is available at Staples, Target, and even airports, but these lack the ambience, the bookishness, of a Barnes & Noble. Even with the gift sections and the toys, most Barnes & Nobles offer a cozy...
Read MoreWhere Are You, Christmas? @ The NRI
This Christmas past, I had a Christmas post at The NRI, which I completely forgot to blog about! Christmas is a busy time of year for us – three celebrations in three days – and things unrelated to shopping, cooking, and Joe’s birthday often slip my mind. But, better late than never… For my family, Christmas is a season in the true sense of the word: in mid-November, my mother enters Merry Magic Xmas Mode, liberating boxes of ornaments, lights, and statuary from a...
Read MoreMumbai University Censors Rohinton Mistry @ The NRI
Late last year, I saw Salman Rushdie promoting his new book, Luka and the God of Fire, at, irony of ironies, a church in Cambridge (the same church in Harvard Square once hosted Richard Dawkins). A lady in the audience asked him about the Rohinton Mistry/Mumbai university debacle, which, at that point, I hadn’t heard of. It’s quite a story, depressing and hopeful in turns, complete with politics and charismatic leaders. Here’s the blurb for the newsy piece I wrote for The NRI...
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