Tag: Books
Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?
The long read: It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell. In 2011, Claudio Aspesi, a senior investment analyst at Bernstein Research in London, made a bet that the dominant firm in one of the most lucrative […]
Have a lover, have friends, read books. Montaigne was right about one thing | Germaine Leece
We think we are escaping ourselves when we read literature, but we might be going deeper into our interior worlds through the therapy of reading. The understanding that literature can comfort, console and heal has been around since the second millennium BC; it is no coincidence that Apollo was the god of medicine as well […]
Barbershop Books is using barbershops to inspire kids to read
Image: Kristine Brown Sometimes a book is just a hobby, a fun way to consume a new story. But sometimes a book is a powerful tool to advance social change. The National Book Foundation announced the winner of the 2017 Innovations In Reading Prize on Monday. The prize is an annual award that honors individuals […]
Can you judge a book by its odour?
Cocoa, wood, rusks every book has a distinctive smell. And each smell says something about how and when it was made, and where it has been. What does it mean to experience a book? To a bibliophile such as Alberto Manguel, smell plays an important part. In a talk at the British Library this week, […]
Detained on Nauru: ‘This is the most painful part of my story when you realise no one cares’
In this excerpt from the book They Cannot Take the Sky, Benjamin talks about his years detained on Nauru, and his undying hopes for the future. Benjamin was taken to Nauru in 2013 with his family. He told the first part of this story on Christmas Day 2014. He is still on Nauru. You just […]