In a rambling essay published in Russia Free Newspaper, Russian President Vladimir Putin offers a solution for edifying “the dominance of Russian culture” once and for all: an official literary canon. “Let us take a survey of our most influential cultural figures," suggests Putin, "and |Each self-respecting student was required to read 100 books from a specially compiled list of the greatest books of the Western world.|compile a 100-book canon| that every Russian school leaver will be required to read."
What will happen when physical Barnes & Noble bookstores and their hard-copy products vanish in favor of e-books, and the chain becomes “little more than a cafe and a digital connection point?”
London’s City University now offers the world’s first master’s degree in crime writing.
For readers who have trouble keeping up with the news (or just following stories in detail), the New York Times gives you Deep Dive, a vaguely Orwellian “context engine” that uses a reading history and the Times archive to provide “readers a collection of stories relating to a topic, based on whatever person, place, event or topic of their choosing.”
Where did closeted Hollywood A-listers go for sex in the '40s? According to a forthcoming memoir by former marine and male madam Scotty Bowers, they went to him. In Full Service, Bowers breaks nearly three decades of silence to talk about setting up liaisons for the likes of Cary Grant, George Cukor, and Rock Hudson during Hollywood’s golden age.
