Hrag Vartanian

One author, Charles Sheehan-Miles, has decided to give out his book for free online even though it is also available for $16.95 on Amazon. Is this the future of publishing?
Sheehan-Miles blogs:
You can download and read the complete book. Share it with your friends, email it, do anything you want with it except sell it. Hope [...]

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I’ll admit it, Arthur Nersesian is one of my favorite writers. Not because he is the hoity-toity wordsmith Ian McEwan can be or the hipper-than-thou Douglas Coupland who seems to shit out bundles of well-phrased ideas, but because Nersesian crafts interesting stories with strong characters with fun to read prose that grapple with issues relevant [...]

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“…Renaissance printer Aldus Manutius is credited with popularizing the use of a dot on the baseline to indicate a full stop (period) in prose, and one slash to indicate pause.” Who knew? Learn more here.

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Most people know Joseph Heller for his WWII novel Catch-22 but his lesser known and more unconventional book Picture This deserves to be better know since it’s full of insightful nuggets of knowledge.
Using Rembrandt’s “Aristole Contemplating the Bust of Homer” (1653) as a springboard, Heller explores the golden ages of Amsterdam and Athens. Sure, it [...]

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The Guardian’s Nicholas Blincoe takes a look at the anti-southwest Asian (aka Middle Eastern) racism of one of England’s most beloved authors, Charles Dickens…turns out Fagin from Oliver Twist isn’t only a slag against Ashkenazi Jews (as is traditionally thought) but a distorted racist vision of southwest Asians in general. The reasons why Dickens feminized [...]

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