The lost art of reading: The relentless cacophony that is life in the 21st century can make settling in with a book difficult even for lifelong readers and those who are paid to do it. Julia Keller on the magical, mystical path linking book and reader. From The Second Pass, a list of ten books that will be pressed into your hands by ardent fans — resist these people. These days, poetry and commerce are rarely on good speaking terms, but in 1955, Marianne Moore, the famous American writer, tried to help Ford name one of its new creations. How about if all the cars and sports teams we name for fleet and powerful animals and cool sounding things that don't exist or mean anything are renamed for literary characters and authors. Amid all the dismal reports about the death of fiction, here's a refreshingly bold act of optimism: a new bimonthly magazine called Electric Literature. Whatever happened to that Anglo-American dialogue that Granta "in good conscience" no longer has time for? Golden age of Indian writing: How a new generation of writers is making waves in South Asia (including Roma Tearne, Aravind Adiga and Arundhati Roy). The power of dictator-lit: Turkmenistan's Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov is only the latest despot to commandeer the printed page.