On the Books: World's largest Shakespeare collection to go online
Shakespeare is being digitized, self-published erotica is more scandalous than previously thought, and Charles Darwin once let his son draw on his manuscripts. Read on for more of today’s top headlines:
The Folger Shakespeare Library collection will soon be available online. The world’s largest Shakespeare library plans to release a series of apps that will digitize its books and manuscripts from Shakespearean England. [BBC News]
The Whiting Writers’ Awards went to Amanda Coplin, C.E. Morgan, Jennifer DuBois and seven other writers on Monday. The $50,000 prizes honor “exceptional talent and promise in early career.” According to the press release, this year’s winners include one playwright, two poets, one non-fiction writer, four fiction writers, and two writers of both fiction and non-fiction.
Two of the women held for a decade by Ariel Castro before escaping in May will be talking to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Mary Jordan for a book about their captivity. [NBC News]
Brad Stone’s new book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, isn’t just about retailer — it also paints Bezos as a boss who tormented employees. [New York Times]
Speaking of Amazon, a new survey found that the content of the self-published erotica books in question are more extreme than traditionally published ones by a ratio of nearly 10 to 1. [LA Times]
Oasis singer Noel Gallagher recently said reading fiction is “a waste of f–king time,” yet he writes fiction, argues Viv Bird. [The Guardian]
Talk about survival of the fittest: Charles Darwin’s son doodled all over the manuscript of On the Origin of Species. [OpenCulture]
On to some must-reads: Check out this touching story of a librarian — nay, curator — who’s working to transform a rural one-room library into a community watering hole. [NPR]
David Sedaris wrote about his sister’s suicide in a moving, poignant essay reflecting on his family. [The New Yorker]
Daniel Mendelsohn argues that George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is “a remarkably feminist epic.” [The New York Review of Books]
List of the day: Here are the 10 best parties in literature. [The Huffington Post]