A joke that’s going around parliamentary Yammers about readers being vulnerable to melancholy because what they love is always doomed to end.
Finally, A Decent App For Borrowing Ebooks From The Library
A clunky, outmoded piece of software called OverDrive had been the standard app for getting reading material from the library onto your Kindle. Instead of merely upgrading, OverDrive (the company) created a new, far more user-friendly app called Libby which debuted but only started getting public attention over the past year. – Engadget
Biden and Imrich share same destinies when it comes to tragedies.
Hunter Biden: ‘I come from a family forged by tragedies’
- By Hunter Biden
Make Use Of: Goodreads is no longer the top dog when it comes to online book communities. Here are the best alternatives. “Goodreads boasts millions of users and a database full of even more books. People flock to the site to discover new titles to consume or catalog what they’ve already read. The platform offers countless useful features; for a time, users were content with it. That’s no longer the case, with many beginning to look elsewhere to fill their cataloging needs. There are countless Goodreads alternatives that cater to book lovers’ different needs. Let’s look at some of them…”
Those who love speculative fiction and are looking for something new and well-written, should run to get a copy of Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning. In her debut novel, most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of climate apocalypse, and Dinétah (the Navajo Nation) has arisen. A magical wall has been built to keep the Diné safe from the outside madness but it can’t keep them safe from the monsters and witches who have awakened. Maggie Hoskie survives in this harsh world using her skills as a supernaturally gifted killer, nicknamed monsterslayer. When Maggie is called to find a girl taken by a monster, she finds she has taken on more than she bargained for. Reluctantly partnering with Kai Aviso, who has powers of his own, they travel the rez in search of clues, battling monsters and more.
Book Publishing Is About Free Speech? Ideas? Well That Myth Is Gone
“There may be an ideological component to publishing Pence and Conway, but it has nothing to do with ideas. It has to do with fetishizing ideological diversity, in which publishing garbage books from prominent Republicans is an end in and of itself. These deals only underline what’s been increasingly obvious for decades now: The commitment to free speech and intellectual diversity is a fig leaf, held up to defend often dubious decisions that are rooted in financial concerns, rather than intellectual or moral ones.” – The New Republic
Pietà , by Michael Fitzgerald
After a run of disappointing books, none of which made it much past the first 50 pages which represent ‘a fair go’, it was a delight to settle into reading Michael Fitzgerald’s new novel Pietà. (Readers may remember that I have previously reviewed his debut The Pacific Room from 2017.) Quite apart from the exquisite writing, Pietà appeals to my love of art and travel, and it became one of those books that I didn’t want to finish, reminding me of that joke that’s going around about readers being vulnerable to melancholy because what they love is always doomed to end. That’s how I feel this morning, cheered only by the prospect of another art-themed novel from Transit Lounge: Night Blue by Angela O’Keefe which features Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles.
Ross Douthat scans the landscape for novelists, filmmakers, intellectuals, and everywhere sees torpor and repetition Torpo
Verizon Sells The Internet Junkyard (AOL, Yahoo…)
The telecom giant is selling Yahoo, AOL and the remainder of its Verizon Media brands to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management in a $5 billion deal announced Monday. – The Hollywood Reporter
NewsNation Is Supposed To Be An ‘Unbiased’ Alternative To Fox, MSNBC, And CNN. Almost No One Is Watching It.
Execs at Nexstar, the country’s largest owner of local TV stations, had research saying that consumers wanted a source of nonpartisan news. So the corporation turned its cable outlet, WGN America, into NewsNation, offering five hours of news programming every evening to 75 million homes. Nielsen says NewsNation averages 27,000 prime-time viewers a night. (That’s nationwide.) Several top editorial hires have quit, and there are allegations that the network is not as unbiased as it claims to be. – Los Angeles Times
How Data Science Is Analyzing The Arts
“Computer scientists are writing algorithms to identify the emotional arcs of novels. Sociologists are building statistical models to analyze why certain works of visual art resonate more than others. Electrical engineers have scraped tens of thousands of book reviews from the online website Goodreads.com to parse why some types of stories drive readers to talk to each other, and what they talk about. Evolutionary biologists and cognitive scientists have adapted models from information retrieval to study tens of thousands of popular Western songs in order to understand cultural change and the evolution of cultural taste.” – Cultural Analytics
Who is the best-known, non-political American married couple?
With Bill and Melinda Gates divorcing, and Kanye and Kim doing the same, America now has a paucity of very well-known married couples, at least outside of politics, where Barack and Michelle Obama reign supreme.
