For An Audiobook To Be Good, It Needs More Than A Good Narrator
While the good narrator (or narrators) is essential, truly good audiobooks also need the right atmosphere - and sometimes the right music. - NPR
Molten Iron Fireworks
Novelist Emma Straub loved working in her neighborhood bookstore and it eventually inspired her to open her own. This is a lovely piece about books, bookstores, neighborhoods, and book lovers. lithub.com
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND Astra
The Wild West Outpost of Japan’s Isolationist EraNarratively
Best Spy Books Five Books. Lots of personal favorites on these lists, including Eric Ambler, John le Carré, Erskine Childers, Fitzroy MacLean, and Olivia Manning. Ben Macintyre weighs in with recommendations, but no one else mentions his excellent books – try Operation Mincemeat, Double Cross, or Agent Zigzag if you’ve not yet had the pleasure.
The Hidden History of Marijuana Narratively
La Digue: The Seychelles’ tropical biking paradiseBBC
These hackers showed just how easy it is to target critical infrastructure MIT Technology Review
Anna Quindlen on the Power of Writing by HandLiterary Hub
Handwriting Has A Power That Computers Can Never Create
"When you’ve written something by hand, the only person who could have done it is you. It’s unmistakable you wrote this, touched it, laid hands and eyes upon it. Something written by hand is a piece of your personality on paper. Typed words are not a fair swap." - LitHub
How 20th Century Literary Analysis Came To Be
In the prewar period, university professors were apt to make vague aesthetic judgments about a book’s “beauty” or “soul” before lobbing in a few comments about the author’s mother or the publishing practices of the time. Richards’s students, by contrast, were asked to exclude all such background blather. - The Guardian