Perhaps crisis forces commonality of purpose on one another.
After living in the United States for over 10 years, here is what I have learned about the Fourth of July: it is more of a barbecuing holiday than anything else.
When Paul Beatty's 'The Sellout' was first published in America in 2015, it was a small release. It got a rave review in the daily 'New York Times' and one in the weekly 'New York Times Book Review,' too, for good measure. But by and large, it was not a conversation-generating book.
In an age where television is viewed as the best medium to 'tell stories,' narrative often stands in for substance on would-be prestige shows.
Bad criticism recites rote arguments. The shame of rote arguments isn't just that they're cliches, though they are, but that they tend to hide from us why a critic is actually thinking what they're thinking.
Vacation reading is not a new concept. Ever since the 19th century, when novels were considered relatively sinful indulgences, leisure and fiction-reading have been closely associated.
Since the era of 'Sherlock Holmes,' private detectives had long been able to influence cases on their own. But the online detective, who had no sort of professional training or even long practice, is a purely modern phenomenon. The Internet changed everything by letting anyone become a self-appointed 'expert' on a case.
The phenomenon of Instagram poets - who are also, to be fair, Tumblr poets and Pinterest poets - has been one of the more surprising side-effects of the selfie age.
The first thing I remember feeling about the 2016 U.S. election was a kind of speechlessness.
Most people do not pay attention to the publisher's imprint on a given book.
Prestige podcasts, like prestige television shows, tend to have an audience that believes itself literate, well-informed, and reasonable. Listening to podcasts, in this model, is a form of virtue.
When a woman shouts, she isn't usually praised for it. She's condemned as aggressive and coarse.