Scientists uncover surprisingly consistent pattern of scholarly curiosity throughout history Sometimes the more things seem to change, the more they stay the same. By analyzing the recorded interests of thousands of scholars born before 1700, researchers found that intellectual curiosity tends to cluster around three broad domains: the human, the natural, and the abstract. These […]
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What’s Happening to Reading? “For many people, A.I. may be bringing the age of traditional text to an end.” “What will happen to reading culture as reading becomes automated?” asks Joshua Rothman in this article in The New Yorker. He examines how new technology such as ereaders and artificial intelligence have changed and will continue
I was surprised recently to learn that Joy Fielding has a new book that came out this month (August 2025), Jenny Cooper Has a Secret. About 30 years ago I read and enjoyed several of Fielding’s novels: That was before my book-blogging days. Then life got busier, and I lost track of Joy Fielding—another case
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A Harvard Professor Breaks Down the Real Rules of Writing Jason Hellerman summarizes an interview with Harvard linguist and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker about “what makes great writing and how you can command attention in the modern era.” The target audience for this piece is writers interested in producing fiction and screenwriting for the general
After the Deluge: What Future for Climate Fiction? Keith Woodhouse discusses “an emerging subgenre that we might call the ‘climate assessment drama.’ These books are vast in size and scope and, at the same time, narrowly concerned with the particular political, ethical, and technical conundrums of the world climate change has wrought.” Why Do Doctors
The 20 In-Flight Crime Movie Options on This Airplane, Ranked This article amused me because, by the time you read this, I will have spent some huge number of hours flying from the West Coast of the U.S. to Amsterdam to embark on a 6-week cruise. As much as I enjoy traveling, I hate these
Linwood Barclay on the Art of Making Everyday Things Terrifying “Making people fear things in their everyday lives in ways they never did before, that’s the dream of every writer of suspenseful tales,” prolific thriller author Linwood Barclay tells us. How the far right seeks to spread its ideology through the publishing world Jason Wilson,
Brain oscillations reveal dynamic shifts in creative thought during metaphor generation Since I’ve written earlier about metaphors as novel titles, this article fascinated me. It reports on recent research into “the neural mechanisms behind metaphor generation, a creative skill that plays an important role in how people understand complex concepts and communicate abstract ideas.” The
