This Is So Stupid, Part I
Apparently, Putin wants to create a 100-title Russian Literary Canon- that every schoolchild would be required to read as a form of “subtle cultural therapy.” At the same time, everyone outside of Russia will freak out and quote 1984 at each other. But seriously, this is totally stupid: Putin’s ...
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[Redacted]
E.J. and Nate have censored this post for reasons that are probably obvious. I swore to myself that I would never write about Amazon, pricing, price checking, and the suckery of NPR ever again, but then of course, NPR has to go and run this insipidly stupid piece about a “predatory” Amazon. I’m ...
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Keep Up the Good Work. And Please Go Bankrupt. [Some Publishers Are D*cks]
This is likely to be the first of two or three “socialist-leaning” posts I’m going to write this week in honor of the New Hampshire primary. . . . Anyway, to get to the point, I just read this PW piece and am feeling the rage. A recently introduced bill in the House of Representatives would bar the ...
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Farhad Manjoo, Amazon, and Independent Bookstores [Controversies]
Following on my post from yesterday, which was following on Richard Russo’s op-ed piece, which was following on Amazon’s “Price Check special,” today Slate’s tech guy, Farhad Manjoo, has his own piece about Amazon and indie bookstores—one that has seemingly pissed off everyone I know. If ...
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Richard Russo, Bookstores, and this Amazon Price Check Thing [Controversies]
We talked about this very briefly on last week’s podcast, but now that Richard Russo has written an op-ed piece for the NY Times, I feel like it’s worth exploring this Amazon Price Check controversy in a bit more detail. First off, for anyone not familiar with this recent Amazon vs. Indie Bookstore kerfuffle, ...
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Sometimes I Don't Think Academics Quite Get It
So, today’s Inside Higher Ed has a piece about “OccupyMLA” the “newest Occupy movement,” which is currently only in Twitter form. My knowledge of this is based almost entirely on personal prejudices and this IHE article, but for any number of reasons, this bugs me immensely.1 First off, ...
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IMPAC's Longlist Sure Is Long [Websites Should Be Pretty]
The longlist for the 2012 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was announced earlier today, and is made up of 147 titles, the full list of which you can find here. It’s a pretty decent, if wide-ranging, group of books, which includes everything from Paul Auster’s latest to Sofi Oksanen’s Purge to our own Private ...
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