Help curb excessive exclamations – resist the urge to use an exclamation point

There is only one exclamation point in Ernest Hemingway’s – The Old Man and the Sea – published in 1951. There were eight exclamation points in Anthony Burgess’ – A Clockwork Orange – published in 1962. But four novels published in the 21st century each have 250 or more exclamation points, with one using 439. And this highlights …

Celebrate the freedom to read – Banned Books Week – Sep 30 – Oct 6

  Everyday in America someone tries to ban a book. The American Library Association reports 326 challenges in 2011. A challenge is more than a person being annoyed with a book, it is a person telling the library they don’t want anyone else to read the book. That is censorship in its most basic form. …

Tumblr blog – celebrities reading poetry

It’s that subject no one wants to study in English class. It’s that aisle in the bookstore that’s always empty. It’s that stuff that star-crossed lovers spout at each other through open windows. Explains the author of this Tumblr, called SpeakCelebrity. Offering that poetry isn’t scary, “it’s exciting, and comforting, and new, and old, and …

The recession hits Harvard…with interesting changes – more money to undergrads, less to books

Harvard isn’t belt-tightening everywhere. Since 2007, its investment in financial aid to undergraduates has risen by more than 78%, which Harvard said is “significantly outpacing increases in tuition.” Undergraduate tuition for the 2012-13 year climbed 3.5% to $54,496. *** As it looks to economize, Harvard has turned some of its attention toward the more than …

Dr. Seuss – before his children’s books, he drew great ads

Before we knew him as Dr. Seuss, he was Theodore Seuss Geisel, adman. As early as 1927 he was illustrating ads for Ford, GE and NBC campaigns. His illustrative style was the same, even then. – Via JESS3

Most of the translation on the planet is now done by Google Translate

“In a given day we translate roughly as much text as you’d find in 1 million books. To put it another way: what all the professional human translators in the world produce in a year, our system translates in roughly a single day. By this estimate, most of the translation on the planet is now …

LA Times Festival of Books – largest in the country, includes Stan Lee, John Cusack, Betty White, Anne Rice

If you’re free this weekend, April 21-22, 2012, you might want to attend the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. The largest book festival in the country with more than 140,000 attendees, 400 authors, 300 exhibitors, 100 panels, cooking demonstrations, and poetry readings. The festival is a free public event held on the campus of …

Kickstarter project: Womanthology – massive all-female comic anthology

I read a lot of comics and it is always upsetting that there are no women creating them. There are female characters everywhere in the stories, many super heroines, and yet, nearly all the top female characters have all-male teams working on them. It is pretty sad, and unfair. The good news is that a …