An all-too-brief article on the current trend in young adult fiction: dystopian nightmares.
Author: Anders Monsen (Page 24 of 82)
Recent article on what really drove Orwell to write 1984 (intellectually), and how many communists disavowed Orwell. both prior to and after the publication of the book.
Once I registered for the New York marathon through the lottery, but since they changed their rules I gave up on that big marathon. Now it appears that the Chicago marathon, whose initial registration system crashed when too many people attempted to register for the 25k spots, will switch to the lottery for the remaining 15k spots. Will they make this a permanent change? I think it’s likely, since marathons are becoming sold out everywhere now.
Greg Beato at reason has an article on how government turned comic books into propaganda. The campaign against comic books and their subsequent regulation through the comic book code killed off a large number of titles, mostly on hype and scare tactics. The power of comic books was recognized by the government, who ran cartoons and comic strips in the midst of World War II.
Homeland is Cory Doctorow’s sequel to Little Brother, and book that won the Prometheus Award a few years ago. Tom Shippey at the Wall Street Journal reviews Homeland, which sounds like a mix of dystopian fiction and idealist politics. It’s high on my list of books to read this year, though.
The Hays Festival has launched free podcasts with talks by noted literary giants.
In a free weekly podcast which you can subscribe to using iTunes you can listen to some stirring past talks. The first 23 will include writers Seamus Heaney, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Harold Pinter, Nadime Gordimer and Ted Hughes.
I don’t a Kindle, and still read books the old fashioned way. Perhaps this is why, when a bug can destroy your entire eBook library. Some day I will stop buying paper books, and I can turn my selves into kindling, but I’m not quite there yet.
A site with brief reviews of libertarian-minded novels, grouped by theme. Some great ideas for reading here, with lots of room for additional books.
Learned today that Ken MacLeod’s novella, The Human Front will appear as a paperback on April 1st. The book includes an interview with MacLeod, as well as two essays on his social philosophy. I’m not sure if the interview and essays appeared in his collection from NESFA, Giant Lizards from Another Star, but the novella is there, as well as poems and other stories, essays and much more.
It’s amazing how scholars are unearthing long lost literary items. In this case it’s 50 poems by Rudyard Kipling (colonial apologist, natch), found while renovating a Manhattan house and elsewhere.
Kipling, like many humans, had his flaws, opinions that changed over time. Once pro-war, he turned bitterly anti-war after the death of his son in 1915.
“His texts have never properly been studied but things are starting to change,” said Pinney. “There is a treasure trove of uncollected, unpublished and unidentified work out there. I discovered another unrecorded item only recently and that sort of thing will keep happening. It is a tremendously exciting time for scholars and for fans of Kipling.”
A three volume edition of his poems is due to appear in March, the first ever complete edition of his verse.
