From Wired:

10. Contemporary literature not confronting issues of general urgency; dominant best-sellers are in former niche genres such as fantasies, romances and teen books.

I’ve long believed that truly powerful and lasting literature should deal with problems in the here and now.  Today’s lit novelists bore me with their historical epics and romances.  Couldn’t be less relevant to today’s issues.

12. Algorithms and social media replacing work of editors and publishing houses; network socially-generated texts replacing individually-authored texts.

This, and the 17 other reasons listed here, would scare any devotee of the printed word.  But I’m slowly coming to realize that the novel is past its heyday, and is no longer the supreme heavy-weight of human thought.  As yet though, none has replaced it, only challenged its supremacy.  What I’m hoping is that the novel will somehow adapt or evolve in the context of this new digital/publishing paradigm.  Maybe it’ll still retain the name ‘novel,’ or maybe it’ll take a form unrecognizable.  For the sake of our livelihood, don’t we need at least something like the novel, with its uncanny ability to provoke deep reflection and thought?

From Slate:

Updike was the consummate stylist with a blogger mentality.

Like I’ve always said (or wanted to say): the man was almost unparalleled in his evocation of detail and subtlety.  Where he lacked was overall vision.  Like the article advises, though, it’s best to keep a pen and paper handy when reading Updike because you’ll likely strike upon a sentence of such beauty and insight that it’ll blow you away.

smartblonde:

links to several lists of must-read books for this summer. i picked up a lot of great suggestions from clicking around here, so i thought i’d pass it along!