"Linguistic diversity is one of a country’s greatest assets because each language shapes a way of seeing and describing the world; each word holds its own history." english.elpais.com/society/2026...

Fascinating: researchers have identified inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi, Prakrit and Sanskrit at tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.

"A consumer is a person whose preëxisting tastes you strive to satisfy over and over; a reader is someone you hope to change, convince, and surprise." Becca Rothfield on the end of books coverage in the Washington Post. www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

On the evolution of the Buddhist practice of mindfulness in the West: "Neoliberal capitalism is trying to harness the psyche as a productive force...We’re numbing ourselves to intolerable conditions so we can keep functioning within them." www.newyorker.com/news/fault-l...

By one of Fernando Pessoa's alter egos.

Feeling a little bereft because I’ve come to the end of what Julian Barnes says will be his last book. Not sure if it entirely hangs together but the last section manages to be wistful, wry, and whimsical all at once.

“The best thing a young writer can now do in America, is to go leftward . . . Do not be passive. Write. Your life in mine, mill, and farm is of deathless significance in the history of the world.” Mike Gold, 1929. Applicable to every country. jacobin.com/2026/02/new-...

"Page by page she’s a pleasure to read," writes the redoubtable Vivian Gornick of Arundhati Roy's 'Mother Mary Comes to Me', but what is lacking, more often than not, is "the ability to put felt life on the page". www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

A letter in the FT: "Perhaps the question isn't how to build more intelligence, but why we've abandoned investing in the intelligence we already have." Answer: because LLMs won't ask for proper wages and working hours.

A profile of Anke Gowda, retired sugar factory worker from Karnataka, and his library of two million books free for anyone to borrow and read. www.bbc.com/news/article...

“I intend to keep nattering on about books, authors and our imperiled literary culture.” Ron Charles on being laid off as book critic at the Washington Post. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Since nothing makes sense anymore, we may as well start pronouncing pirates the same way as pilates.

“It's always the same wherever one goes—it's not the most powerful rulers who have the happiest populations.” - Graham Greene, The Quiet American

Borges: “the art of verse consists in arousing expectation and satisfying it” while “the art of prose is perhaps more difficult, because it consists in arousing an expectation and then disappointing it.” english.elpais.com/culture/2026...

Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Harold Bloom, James Wood...and Jack Edwards. www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

Sounds like an unnecessarily painful read.

Geetanjali Shree: “One doesn’t have to try to be political or sociological in these times, when politics and society are so much upon us. Whatever you do, they creep in.” observer.co.uk/culture/book...

Is there such a thing as “a New Yorker story?” A very deep dive by Naomi Kanakia. www.woman-of-letters.com/p/money-and-...

Frida Kahlo once wrote: "I’m convinced of my disagreement with the counterrevolution – imperialism – fascism – religions – stupidity – capitalism – and the whole gamut of bourgeois tricks." Today, we have "Frida Kahlo-branded luxury condos". www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/01/29/f...

A plea from the Philippines for "a future where 'literature' is not shorthand for the Western canon, and we are [not] forced to Other ourselves in our own country." Via the Literary Saloon. philstarlife.com/news-and-vie...

People should try this during waking hours, too.

The book doesn’t matter. The pleasure does.” Ian McEwan, Helen Fielding, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson, and other authors on how to read more. www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

"The sky in Havana isn’t falling." Despite many challenges, Cuba's Jazz Plaza Festival endures. english.elpais.com/culture/2026...

“The book starts on a certain night the people of my generation might remember. There is a famous hanging in our history.” Mohammed Hanif on his new novel, ‘Rebel English Academy’. www.dawn.com/news/1969114

On Anna's Archive (from the Hindu).

Michael Parenti, RIP.

Wonder if this is still true.

The problem with "the Venice of the East" and other colonial-era travel metaphors. www.bbc.com/travel/artic...

"Toni Morrison’s oeuvre is a sustained and courageous masterclass in how the aliveness in writing shifts the energy in life, and Muriel Spark’s Loitering with Intent, like all her books, will never fail to send me on my way rejoicing": Ali Smith www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...

Ivan Ehlers nails it.

Katherine Rundell: "I loathe the power of certain tech companies – headed by certain billionaires who have shown themselves sympathetic to authoritarianism – to bully and control our lives and our imagination." www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...

“Fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt.” - C.G. Jung

brb, replacing the rules-based international order with the fools-based international order.

🎙️: Daniyal Mueenuddin speaks with NPR about ‘This is Where the Serpent Lives’, the autobiographical details in its pages — and the manuscript based on his mother’s life languishing in his drawer. www.npr.org/2026/01/19/n...

“To read Sri Lanka’s war is to read across shards: to read diagonally, across genres, across denials.” Shyam Tekwani on the fiction and non-fiction of the country’s civil war. newlinesmag.com/review/sri-l...

An interesting (and admittedly provocative) thesis from Michael Arnheim: “Since the beginning of recorded time, there have been, regardless of label, essentially only two forms of government: monarchy and oligarchy.”

“You know of the Rosetta Stone?” “What has she to do with this?” - Holmes and Watson in Nicholas Meyers’s enjoyable pastiche, ‘The Return of the Pharaoh’

I just read an Amazon reviewer's rant about a book with "a low content to word ratio". Writers: please ensure your work meets the necessary data-density requirements.

"What I have found repeatedly in these books is how the trauma created by social and political systems impacts families and relationships down the generations." Maya Jaggi on the EBRD Literature Prize for novels from Central and Eastern Europe. fivebooks.com/best-books/t...

In which Arundhati gives it those ones.

Books find a way.

Mini-review. I started Manish Chauhan’s debut novel with a sense of weariness: the usual declarative sentences of the realist mode, everything spelt out, and familiar territory of immigrant life and arranged marriage. Think ‘Brick Lane’ meets ‘The Year of the Runaways’. (1/4)

"The history of literature is, in many ways, the history of its feuds." www.washingtonpost.com/books/2026/0...

"Consumers now possess merely an illusion of choice." 25 years after Eric Schlosser revealed the practices of the industrial food giants in 'Fast Food Nation', the profits – and dangers – of mass producing meat and milk have only grown. www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ja...

It’s literary festival season in India.

Every book is longer. (By Ellis Rosen.)

Oh no. Companies may have to deal with less surplus because they pay workers fairly.