books

This week, we read a very short story, The Great Silence, as we start to head toward the end of Ted Chiang’s Exhalation collection. This story asks questions about how we connect with nature, and al

What would we do if we could visit our own pasts or futures? Are we more likely to change our timelines, or will our timelines actually project themselves back on to us more forcefully? This is the fi

It’s a new year, a new decade and a renewed opportunity to read great non-fiction and fiction that strikes at the heart of the ambition, power and challenges of technology and its effect on society

Perlego, the textbook subscription service, has raised $9 million in Series A funding. Backing the round is Charlie Songhurst, Dedicated VC, and Thomas Leysen (Chairman of Mediahuis and Umicore). Perl

We talk a lot about startup ecosystems around these parts, and for good reason. Strong ecosystems have great reservoirs of talent congregated close together, a culture built around helping one another

Online storytelling community Wattpad, also now a content feeder for streaming services and other media companies, is taking its two consumer-facing paid products global. Wattpad Premium, the ad-free

“The book itself is a curious artefact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can las

Wattpad, an online community for original fiction whose stories have been turned into streaming hits like Netflix’s “The Kissing Booth,” is now turning its eyes to publishing. The co

Steve Jobs famously once said that people don’t read anymore, but it turns out younger people are, in fact, reading quite a lot — just in different ways than expected. Case in point: 70 mi

Amazon today publicly launched a new perk for Prime members with young children, with the broad release of the new subscription-based “Prime Book Box” service. The $22.99 per box offering

Amazon acquired social reading service Goodreads five years ago, squelching the life out of the competitive landscape, as minimal as it was. So it’s promising to see a new app appear with the g

Reese Witherspoon’s media empire, Hello Sunshine, has teamed up with Audible to work on an audiobook project. The collaboration will initially see the launch of a showcase of Audible audiobooks

In a fascinating post, Brian Krebs and a group of security researchers have found a method for laundering money through expensive ebooks. It started when author Patrick Reames received an Amazon tax f

In what amounts to faint praise for the strength of the physical book NPD reported that print book sales rose 1.9 percent in 2017, less than the 3 percent growth posted in 2013-2016. NPD tracks book s

Keeping on track is hard. Over the years I’ve tried a number of personal information managers – PIMs, for short – from the original Palm V to my current iPhone/iCal/Vyte/phone tag me

Chat fiction apps are among some of the most popular in the App Store, thanks to their highly engaged, largely teenage to young adult fan base who enjoy reading thrilling stories told in the form of t

Today’s kids aren’t just reading books. They’re also tapping and playing with interactive stories on tablets as preschoolers, then delving into instant messaging-like chat fiction ap

Quarterly started in 2011 as a highbrow subscription box service, with boxes (delivered every three months, as its name suggests) curated by celebrities like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Pharrell Williams, an

Amazon has long relied on customers providing feedback and other ranking data as part of the process of encouraging more sales on its platform, and now the e-commerce giant is adding a new twist on

Richard Clarke has been watching the world for decades. The cybersecurity czar for the Bush and Clinton administrations, Clarke has been thinking and writing about threats – real-world and cyber