The Costa book awards, after running for half a century, have been abruptly scrapped. The coffee shop chain has said the 2021 awards, which were announced in February this year, were the last. Read more
New species of alga named for poet Amanda Gorman
Researchers discovered a new species of alga in central New York and named it Gormaniella terricola, with the genus named after poet Amanda Gorman. The new species is quite interesting in that its chloroplast genome is highly repetitive and contains quite a bit of DNA from fungi and bacteria, meaning it was likely invaded multiple times from other species through a process called horizontal transfer. Read more
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A New Way to Choose Your Next Book
Most books are sold online, where it’s impossible to replicate the experience of browsing in a brick-and-mortar store. Book-discovery apps aim to change that. Read more
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The Forgotten Noir Detective
…the investigator who was pulled off the 1929 case was one Leslie Turner White, who served as inspiration for Chandler’s Marlowe, and whose autobiography, Me, Detective (1936), played a pivotal if largely forgotten role in the formation of American noir. Read more
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The Walter Tevis Renaissance
Gin, bourbon, valium, weed, horse racing, nine-ball, poker, pills, petroleum, chess, sex, television, losing, winning—the novels of Walter Tevis are queasy with addictions big and little. Most are hazardous. Some are deadly. A few seem nice enough, but nice is usually booby-trapped somehow, so that a character can’t enjoy, say, a game of pool without going on a bender a page later. These are novels without rising or falling action; they move to the jerkier rhythms of recovery and relapse. Read more
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Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks
The 12 essays in this superlative collection from New Yorker staff writer Keefe reflect, as he says in his preface, his abiding preoccupations: “crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.” … Every one of these selections is a journalistic gem. Immensely enjoyable writing married with fascinating subjects makes this a must-read. Read more
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French author Alice Zeniter has won the eye-popping €100,000 Dublin Literary Award
The Art of Losing by French novelist Alice Zeniter has won the prestigious Dublin Literary Award, a prize which comes with a handsome glass trophy and the world’s largest purse for a single novel published in English—a whopping €100,000. Read more
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Two Professors Found What Creates a Mass Shooter. Will Politicians Pay Attention?
Mass shooters overwhelmingly fit a certain profile, say Jillian Peterson and James Densley, which means it’s possible to ID and treat them before they commit violence. Read more
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Hindi Novel Wins International Booker Prize for the First Time
“Tomb of Sand,” written by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell, won despite getting little previous attention from reviewers. Read more
The Real Story of Pinocchio Tells No Lies
Forget what you know from the cartoon. The 19th-century story, now in a new translation, was a rallying cry for universal education and Italian nationhood. Read more
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