Category: Miscellaneous

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Boom in Memoir Industry as Ordinary People Record Their Stories

…people have different reasons for wanting to record their lives. “Sometimes their motivation to write their biography might be as a result of a big moment in their life, be that an achievement or a turning point, good or bad. But a lot of the time motivation simply comes from either themselves wanting to get their stories down to pass on to their families, or their families wanting to record stories from parents or grandparents.” Read more

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ICYMI Merriam-Webster Added 370 Words and Phrases to the Dictionary

ICYMI, “lewk,” “pumpkin spice” and “janky” are among the 370 new entries that have made it into the latest update of the Merriam-Webster dictionary … Notable additions include COVID-19-era words like “subvariant,” “booster dose,” “emergency use authorization,” “false negative” and “false positive.” The dictionary also prepared a full plate of food-centric words, such as omakase, birria, oat milk and bahn mi. Meanwhile, some of the slang-sourced words might need a little more explanation. Sus (“suspicious” or “suspect”), baller (“excellent, exciting or extraordinary, especially in a way that is suggestive of a lavish lifestyle”) and cringe (“so embarrassing, awkward, etc. as to cause one to cringe”) all made the cut, as well as abbreviations like FWIW (“for what it’s worth”), and ICYMI (“in case you missed it”). Read more

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11 Books to Read During Hispanic Heritage Month

Some names will be familiar, others new. Of course, no reading list is ever complete, no list ever able to capture the range of our collective experiences as a people. But I chose these, a mix of conventional and unorthodox narratives, to illustrate the scope of our literary capabilities. Read more

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The Radical Books Rewriting Sex

If you believe the headlines, there’s not all that much sex happening right now. We are living, apparently, through a “sex recession”, with young people especially having less. The blame has been pinned on everything from the housing crisis and the pandemic to a backlash to the hook-up culture of the past decade. But there is one place where sex is resolutely on the agenda – in literature. Particularly that written by women. In a new slew of fiction and non-fiction books by female writers exploring the messy intricacies of desire, sex isn’t just a subtext or a brief encounter; but front and centre. Read more

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The New “Tinder for Bookworms” Has the Least Sexy Name on the Planet

Hey, nerds. Do you have more books than you do friends? Do you ever find yourself explaining the plot of the novel you’re reading to your dog? Are you looking for that special someone to lie next to you in bed in the morning while you ignore each other and read your own books? Turns out there’s an app for that (or there will be—it’s still in early beta). Yep, it’s “Tinder for bookworms“—though to be fair, it isn’t actually a book dating app, but rather a “book meetup app.” It’s called Klerb. Read more

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