Polymath's Guide to News and Ideas
Are computer games a literary genre?
GUARDIAN : Sci-fi has a nobler literary tradition than you might think. Doris Lessing, Iain Banks trading as Iain M Banks and Toby Litt have all turned their hand to it... READ MORE
A Familiar Refrain
MITALI'S FIRE ESCAPE : Why are children's books still so white?" we asked on the Fire Escape last year... READ MORE
Kureishi on the Rushdie affair
PROSPECT MAGAZINE : Twenty years after The Satanic Verses, Anshuman A Mondal talks to young British Muslims about faith and politics... READ MORE
In times of trouble, fiction thrives
PHILLY : No, Raymond Chandler didn't snap out that advice. And many Philadelphia-area fiction writers plainly started on their literary tasks long before 401(k)s began dropping by half... READ MORE
Why the Plath Legacy Lives
ROOMFORDEBATE.BLOGS.NYTIMES.COM : It has been 46 years since Sylvia Plath gassed herself to death in her kitchen, and it was worldwide news when her daughter Frieda Hughes announced that Plath’s 47-year-old son... READ MORE
Turning men into Page Turners
GUARDIAN : It has long been accepted by publishers that women buy – and read – more books than men... READ MORE
How Science Fiction Found Religion
CITY JOURNAL : There is a young man, different from other young men. Ancient prophecies foretell his coming, and he performs miraculous feats... READ MORE
Defeating Post-Tenure Review
WWW.INSIDEHIGHERED.COM : Who reviews the performance of tenured faculty members? Can such reviews have teeth without interfering with the principles of tenure... READ MORE
Oxford Literary Festival: George Orwell's son speaks for the first time about his father
TIMESONLINE | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT : What would it have been like to be brought up by George Orwell? Pretty grim, you might think. But you would be wrong. In June 1944... READ MORE
Why books won't change your life
GUARDIAN : There are certain turns of phrase in the modern reviewers' arsenal that are guaranteed to turn the stomach of any reader... READ MORE