The annals of the unprintable.
How the new dictonary words are decided (hint: “podcast” will make it; “acheiropoietoi” and “blat” won’t).
You may as well be trying to ban the Hardy Boys for homoeroticism.
When art imitates life. A lot.
Reuters employees, in solidarity, took a group coffee break.
The suspense about the Man Booker prize ends soon. Here’s the cheatsheat. And some thoughts about the notion of prizes in general: “Books that are chosen by a committee who must settle in the end for the book that everyone least disagrees about” (via Maud Newton).
Literary biography is one of the background noises of our age. It’s a decent, friendly sort of hum, like the Sunday papers or chatter on a train. It gives the punters a bit of history and a bit of literature, and perhaps a bit of gossip, and what’s more it saves them the trouble of reading history. And poems too, for that matter.