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Fail Better

The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery by Sarah Lewis Simon & Schuster, 2014; 272pp   In 2010, Sandra Bullock was briefly my favorite person in the world. In the same weekend, she won and accepted the Golden Raspberry for Worst Actress (for All About Steve) and, for her role in […]

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Steven Pinker On Style

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker Viking, 2014; 368pp Is it better to err unwittingly or to be all crouching pedant, hidden snoot? This is perhaps a question more of lifestyle than writing style, but one I nevertheless contemplated throughout the happy week I […]

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ReadEasy, 15 May 2015

ReadEasy: a literary submarine cruising the depths of the internet. This week: writers recommend writers. That’s nice. Read on for top tips for #FridayReads et al from Karl Ove Knausgaard, Margaret Attwood, Stephen King, Elizabeth Gilbert, Joyce Carol Oates, and David Sedaris.   (Pause to get a coffee. This is not part of the found object. :] ) NB the […]

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One Simple Rule

After hearing from our six guest writers in April on the subject “One Simple Rule”, you might think we’d have some pretty solid advice for you. We don’t. Write what you know? Well, sometimes it’s best not to. Everyone should know CPR? Granted; hard to argue. Back up your work? Phew, yes, we’d all have saved […]

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Sheep-dipping, singing, and feminism with Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts

On April 21, our co-founder Amanda Foreman interviewed Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts about their roles in Thomas Vinterberg’s new adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd at New York’s La Grenouille. Below is a transcript of their talk.   Amanda Foreman: I think the reason why we love the nineteenth-century novelists — the Brontës, the Dickenses, the […]

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