A boy who claimed to have died, gone to heaven, and come back to life has said he lied. We ran a story on Colton Burpo, a kid who claims a similar story. Burpo hasn’t retracted his (yet?).
Yesterday, the Brian Lehrer show staged a debate about Amazon between the attorney Scott Turow and the self-published author Joe Konrath. An informal poll asked listeners whether they think Amazon is good for readers, bad for readers, or whether the answer is “complicated.” Responses were split about equally among the choices.
Natasha Vargas-Cooper (a frequent Bookforum contributor) is leaving The Intercept for Jezebel—and taking a pay cut—in order to report more on women’s issues.
Finalists for the National Magazine Awards—known as the “Ellies”—have been announced. Sixty-six magazines in twenty-four categories have been recognized. Among those nominated in the most prestigious category, Magazine of the Year, are New York, Vogue, and Cosmopolitan. The awards will be presented February 2 at the New York Marriott Marquis.
Academics at Wayne State University in Michigan have issued a list of “lost” words they recommend be recovered: caterwaul, concinnity, knavery, mélange, rapscallion, opsimath, obambulate, philistine, flapdoodle and subtopia. We insist that at least half of those are still in adequate circulation at Bookforum. The Independent was similarly unimpressed; in response, it offers its own list: bloviate, sesquipedalian, vituperate, shibboleth, escutcheon, tatterdemalion, rubicund, dundreary, and pone.
On Tuesday, after the president gives his State of the Union address, he’ll have conversations with three YouTube personalities—Bethany Mota, GloZell, and Hank Green—whom Buzzfeed describes respectively as a “teenage makeup expert, a comedian whose husband is an Army veteran, and a professional nerd.” The five- to ten-minute interviews will feature questions from the host and from social media, and are aimed to appeal to young people.
