Book Reviews Photo by Dominik Scythe / Unsplash A new book by a Nobel laureate and Booker award-winning author always brings with it a sense of trepidation. Will the new novel live up to the already established high expectations? Klara and the Sun (Knopf, 2021) is particularly tricky because it revisits questions about life in posthuman futures, explored partly in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005). However, Ishiguro’s new novel and its nonhuman narrator, Klara, weave a spell on the reader from the opening pages that continues to be all-absorbing. We forget that the narrator is a robot and remain involved in the vicissitudes of her life, till the final pages when she is waiting for an end to her powers by the slow decline of her electronic circuitry. As we are immersed in the trajectory of Klara’s life, Ishiguro invites us to explore the question of what it is that constitutes us as human. To what extent can machines approximate the qualities of a human, and is there anything unique in the human mind in a world where artificial intelligence is increasingly powerful? The novel begins with Klara being displayed in the window of a store selling AI “friends” to children. Klara is very observant and records her perceptions in her memories for future use. She forms an instantaneous bond with Josie when she comes in to check out AI friends and then waits for many weeks for Josie to come back and take her home as promised.... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2022-03-01 21:50:34 UTC ]
In Michaela Coel’s excellent BBC TV series “I May Destroy You”, her character Arabella’s journey concludes in a bookshop with the launch of her self-published book. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-07-17 06:11:20 UTC ]
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Profile Books will publish Shaun Bythell's Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops in November. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-07-08 23:31:01 UTC ]
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David’s Bookshop in Hertfordshire has been bought by its staff and remodelled as a John Lewis-style employee ownership trust. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-07-01 19:30:47 UTC ]
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Publishing, including books, newspapers and magazines, could see a £7bn fall in revenue and 51,000 jobs axed due to Covid-19's effect on bookshop closures and print sales, a report claims. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-17 06:06:17 UTC ]
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Will browsing be allowed, or will we have to judge a book by its cover? With Waterstones and some indie shops set to open on 15 June, Alison Flood finds out what the plan isMelissa Davies had planned to fulfil a lifelong dream and open her independent bookshop, Pigeon Books, in Southsea, at the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-06-12 06:00:14 UTC ]
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Bernardine Evaristo and Reni Eddo-Lodge take No 1 slots in wake of anti-racist demonstrations, as Waterstones staff ask chain to support causeBernardine Evaristo and Reni Eddo-Lodge have become the first black British women to top the UK’s fiction and nonfiction paperback charts, in a week where... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-06-10 13:46:40 UTC ]
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Children's bookshop Button & Bear in Shrewsbury is to close blaming the "fickle" high street and customer expectations on price. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-08 23:59:54 UTC ]
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IN 1984, George Ramsden, a 30-year-old British bookseller who had never read anything by Edith Wharton, bought her personal library for $80,000. He kept the books in a room above his bookshop where he would invite select visitors to view them by asking if they wanted to come up and see “Edith.”... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-06-08 12:30:25 UTC ]
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It’s never too early to learn that racism is wrong and we should be doing something about it. These books will help show our kids how, writes publisher and bookseller Aimée FeloneDo the work: Layla F Saad’s anti-racist reading list The weight of the world seems heavier than ever right now. The... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-06-04 07:00:00 UTC ]
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Nestled in the heart of Melbourne's city laneways, Leonardo Art Shop - also known as Nibbi's - provided inspiration and education to a generation of young artists. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2020-05-21 20:00:41 UTC ]
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“I resisted. I would not die. I could not.” Katherine Anne Porter—the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author of Ship of Fools and Pale Horse, Pale Rider—was born 130 years ago today in Indian Creek, Texas, and should, by all expectations, have died less than twenty-eight years... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-05-15 18:30:52 UTC ]
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The pandemic has thrown publishing and booksellers into crisis – and left customers struggling to obtain books when they most want them. But some in the industry sense an opportunity to drag it into the 21st centuryOn 18 March, Emma Corfield-Walters received the news that for the second year... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-05-10 08:00:20 UTC ]
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Survey shows 60% expect the impact of the pandemic may put them out of business, prompting calls for concerted helpMore than half of the UK’s small publishers fear they could be out of business by the autumn as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to research by the Bookseller, which... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-05-07 15:02:20 UTC ]
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On this episode of Rekindled, award-winning author Vanessa Hua talks with Amy Meyerson about her new book, The Imperfects, a story about a priceless inheritance that leads one family on a life-altering pursuit of the truth. Meyerson talks about the process of researching for her new novel, using... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-05-06 20:00:35 UTC ]
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The future of the Bertrams wholesaling business is at risk following the sale of its online bookshop The Wordery and the temporary closure of its book supply business as a result of the coronavirus lockdown. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-02 22:55:42 UTC ]
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The days in quarantine would all blend together if it weren’t for Tuesday, which is the day new books hit the (now metaphorical) shelves. Here are a few of the titles dropping today. You can get them from your local indie and/or Bookshop (which, by the way, has now raised over one million... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-28 13:57:38 UTC ]
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The independent bookstore e-commerce site Bookshop.org has seen a 2,000% increase in sales in the last month and has become a lifeline for many stores that have been temporarily closed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet despite its apparent success, the site has skeptics. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-04-24 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The Authors' Club has launched new digital initiative LitFest Online in response to the cancellation of festivals and bookshop events. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-04-22 02:33:41 UTC ]
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but today is Tuesday. The only way I know that today is Tuesday is because all these new books are coming out today! So get excited, stay inside, order any of these titles from Bookshop if you’re so inclined, and maybe #BuyGiftCards to support your local... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-07 14:00:24 UTC ]
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We’ve already brought your attention to the ways you can help bookstores (and bookstore workers) during the coronavirus pandemic, and here’s another one: a collective of recently laid-off booksellers has started an online storefront at Bookshop.org (in case you missed it, Bookshop is the new... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-25 15:14:23 UTC ]
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