NPR

Round-Down: Extra! Extra! Paper Lives!

Round-Down: Extra! Extra! Paper Lives!

Despite the endless negative news reports and doomsday forecasts regarding the rise of eBooks at the expense of paper books, recent studies and reports vindicate those of us who prefer pulp to pixels. According to the American Booksellers Association, independent booksellers are continuing to add new stores, which means there are more places to buy and…

Black and white photo of a group of people burning a pile of books in the middle

The Ploughshares Round-down: The Problem with Literary Doomsday Laments

We who love literature face an urgent crisis: a gruesome epidemic of articles worrying over the demise of literature, reading, English Departments, and apparently (along with them) culture, art, morality, humanity, and ALL KNOWLEDGE AND CIVILIZATION. We’re in dire need of an antidote for this doom-prophesying fever, these impassioned warnings about “philistinism.” (A word that, btw, needs to please hit a wall and slide…