Everyone has that one book that they’re thrilled to find out a friend or acquaintance has also read. The experts behind TED talks are no exception. And when the folks at TED asked them to name the books that they’re always thrilled to find out someone else has also read, the result was an incredible reading list. The whole list is 58 books long! As you might expect, the list of recommendations is incredibly diverse. Since experts on all sorts of different topics were polled, the results include everything from science fiction and fantasy to books on architecture and social justice. While …
If you’re like us, you think about books even when you’re not reading. For all the times that you can’t stick your nose in a book, we recommend these top-notch literary podcasts. Put them on in the car or while you do the dishes, and thank us later! BBC World Book Club Not everyone has their own neighborhood book club. For those of us without book-loving friends in the area, virtual book clubs can fill the void. BBC’s World Book Club offers a unique advantage over regular book clubs: they have the authors themselves come on the show to discuss …
As book lovers, we’re not quite sure that a picture is worth a thousand words. We’re pretty big fans of words, but we do have to admit that images can add a lot to a story. That’s why we put together this list of 10 great illustrated editions of our favorite books. Animal Farm by George Orwell, illustrated by Joy Batchelor and John Halas This illustrated edition was originally put out in 1954, nine years after the first edition of Animal Farm. It’s been hard to find for years, but no more: Penguin re-published this version this year to celebrate the 70th …
Copies of William Shakespeare’s First Folio – a three volume set of Shakespeare’s plays that was first published in 1623 – are extremely rare. But the world is now one copy richer, thanks to a surprising discovery on an obscure Scottish island. A copy of the First Folio has just been discovered on the Isle of Bute, The New York Times reports. The Isle of Bute is a small Scottish island, about 60 miles west of Glasgow. The Folio belongs to the seventh Marquess of Bute, Johnny Dumfries, but its existence was never before uncovered – not even in 1902, when scholars …
How much would you pay for a piece of Harry Potter history? One buyer recently shelled out £278,000 for a chair that author J.K. Rowling sat in while writing the first two Harry Potter books. That’s more than $390,000 – quite a bit for a chair, even one with such a magical history! The chair was one of four mismatched chairs that Rowling acquired for free when she was living in obscurity in Edinburgh, the Guardian reports. It was the most comfortable of the four, so Rowling sat in it when she penned Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and its first sequel, Harry …
