Tag: long list
The Dirty Secrets of Book Blurbs
If there’s one thing authors love more than procrastinating, it’s praising one another. During the Renaissance, Thomas More’s Utopia got a proto-blurb from Erasmus (“divine wit”), while Shakespeare’s First Folio got one from Ben Johnson (“The wonder of our stage!”). By the 18th century, the practice of selling a book based on some other author’s endorsement was so well established that Henry Fielding’s spoof novel Shamela even came with fake blurbs, including one from “John Puff Esq.”
Blurbs have always
The End of Mom Guilt
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There was a drawer in a cabinet in my bedroom where my mother kept the congratulatory cards she’d received after I was born. When I was little, I liked to take them out and look at them.
Margaret Atwood: Your Feelings Are No Excuse
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Editor’s note: The sixth annual Hitchens Prize was awarded to Margaret Atwood at a dinner last night in New York. The award is given by the Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation in association with The Atlantic, where Christopher Hitchens was a contributing editor; it was given originally