Category: Books

  • Everybody’s a Muggle in Rowling’s “A Casual Vacancy”

    As I type these words I have reached page 160 of J. K. Rowling’s new novel, “A Casual Vacancy,” so I’m about one third done and have made enough progress to know that I’ll finish the book and that I can draw early conclusions. Note: there are no plot spoilers here past the first five…

  • Simile Search: Please Help This Writer!

    I’m looking for evocative comparisons that talk about how one thing so automatically comes with another that we take the pairing for granted. Like, “the juice comes with the meat” (except it often doesn’t) or “the warmth that comes with the fire” but preferably less flabby.  Something taste or smell related (for its Proustian oomph)…

  • Short Post: There’s More to the Amazon story than Fast Company conveys

    Kit Eaton over at Fast Company (a must read in general) blogged today about Amazon’s announcement that it now sells more e-Books than physical books.  Here’s a relevant snippet including a link to the Amazon press release: Since April the first, for every 100 print-and-paper books Amazon has sold, it’s also sold 105 e-books, according…

  • The Shakespeare Brand: Yesterday’s iMedia Talk now UP on YouTube

    UPDATE: More of the talk now embedded below. Yesterday I had the great pleasure of speaking at the iMedia Brand Summit– an event that I’ve been intimately associated with for years but at which I’ve rarely presented while wearing my research hat.  This talk is the seed of my next book length project, and I…

  • Book Review: “Scrawl,” a terrific YA novel by Mark Shulman

    Here’s the executive summary of this post: “Scrawl” reveals the inner life of a junior high school bully, a huge, violent, lower class, shambling boy named Tod Munn who is secretly brilliant but plays being an oaf to conceal his intelligence and retain his hidden-in-plain-sight status in the complex social economy of his school. We…