Free Republic

Nearly 2,000 years after it was buried in Mount Vesuvius ash, a charred Roman scroll has revealed its author and title without even being unrolled. Title revealed on PHerc. 172 using ink detection model. - Vesuvius Challenge The scroll, named PHerc. 172, is one of hundreds unearthed in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum, which was entombed in volcanic debris when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, one of history’s most infamous eruptions The scroll was scanned in July at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire. Unusually, traces of ink appeared in the X-ray images, enabling...

There’s nothing like the magic of getting lost in a good book. Who doesn’t love being dazzled by a fantastical world, riveted by a twisty murder-mystery plot, or emotionally destroyed by an epic ending from the comfort of their couch? But if it’s been months or years since you’ve devoured a book, you might be wondering where that spark went—and if you can ever get it back. First off, there’s no shame in losing your bibliophilic gusto at some point. Thanks to the little dopamine dispensers glued to our palms and endless TV shows competing for our attention, it’s a...

Pelham Grenville (PG – or Plum) Wodehouse breathed his last on Valentine’s Day fifty years ago. As Evelyn Waugh saw it, Wodehouse inhabited a world as timeless as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Alice in Wonderland. Wodehouse himself said it was as though he was forever in his last year at school. It was, Waugh said, ‘as if the Fall of Man had never happened’. In a letter to some admirers, Wodehouse wrote: The world I write about, always a small one – one of the smallest I ever met, as Bertie… would say – is now not even small,...

Some of the most checked-out books in public libraries across the country in 2024 include Kristin Hannah's The Women, Rebecca Yarros' Fourth Wing, and Emily Henry's Happy Place. These books landed on the year-end wrap lists of public libraries in New York City, Cincinnati, Seattle and other cities. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin, was the most checked-out adult book in New York City and the second-most popular adult fiction book in Denver. There, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store was number one; that novel by James McBride also made the most-borrowed lists at libraries in San Francisco,...

Kids aren’t reading anymore. That’s the conclusion of a recent article by The Associated Press noting that children are not only reading less for fun — only 14% say they do so daily compared to 27% in 2012 — but they are also not getting assigned actual books much in class either. Per the AP, “In many English classrooms across America, assignments to read full-length novels are becoming less common. Some teachers focus instead on selected passages — a concession to perceptions of shorter attention spans, pressure to prepare for standardized tests and a sense that short-form content will prepare...

Being popular on TikTok can make just about anything fly off the shelves, from beauty products to cucumbers…Books are no exception – authors such as Colleen Hoover and Sarah J Maas have what is known as “BookTok” to thank for their stratospheric success. Now joining their ranks, in a twist nobody saw coming, is Fyodor Dostoevsky. In 2024, the Penguin Classics little black book edition of Dostoevsky’s White Nights was the fourth most sold work of literature in translation in the UK. “We have a member of staff who has worked here for 25 years and he said we’d sell...

Uncover the dark and curious truth behind the death of one of America's most beloved authors, Edgar Allan Poe. For centuries, the circumstances surrounding his death have remained shrouded in mystery. See video.

For your Halloween Reading edification. One of the scariest stories of all time. Who Goes There by John W. Campbell Jr. This story was the basis for several movies called 'The Thing'. https://soma.sbcc.edu/users/davega/xnon_active_classes/filmst_118/FILMS/ThingFromAnotherPlanet/Who%20Goes%20There_Book.pdf

An amateur historian has discovered a long-lost short story by Bram Stoker, published just seven years before his legendary gothic novel Dracula. Brian Cleary stumbled upon the 134-year-old ghostly tale while browsing the archives of the National Library of Ireland. Gibbet Hill was originally published in a Dublin newspaper in 1890 - when the Irishman started working on Dracula - but has been undocumented ever since. Stoker biographer Paul Murray says the story sheds light on his development as an author and was a significant “station on his route to publishing Dracula”. The ghostly story tells the tale of a...

Banned Book Week was last week. Did you miss it? For anyone who took it seriously, let me just say this: Banned Book Week is a complete fraud. The books highlighted during Banned Book Week are the opposite of banned. If you look at any list of so-called banned books, you'll see titles that have been continuously promoted world-wide and most have sold millions of copies. They're not banned. They're everywhere. And given the cultural climate, you already know what kinds of books these are. Most are books that in any other era would have been correctly classified as obscenity....

The deer stand was one of Zack Tutweiler’s best thinking places. The rain had masked the sound of his climbing up the tree’s nailed-on steps and into the plywood box an hour before dawn. The blind’s roof sheltered him from the rain. For as long as seventeen-year-old Zack had been allowed to go hunting by himself, the blind had been a place he could go without being hassled for choosing solitude. He brought home enough meat that nobody bitched about his disappearing with his compound bow into the forest. Now there was nobody left to bitch at him for anything....

Tar-Atanamir (pron. [aˈtanamir]) was the thirteenth King of Númenor. Tar-Atanamir succeeded his father, Tar-Ciryatan, and ruled for 192 years, from S.A. 2029 until his death, being the first King to rule for life since Tar-Minyatur.He was proud and greedy like his father. During his reign the Númenóreans exacted heavy tributes from the men of the coasts of Middle-earth. In his time the Shadow fell upon Númenor and the king and those that followed his opinion spoke openly against the ban that forbade them to sail to Tol Eressea and Aman and the mortality of Men, but they still kept their...

The Mexican writer is considered one of the most important figures of magical realism.This May 16, the Jalisco writer and photographer Juan Rulfo would be turning 107 years old today, so today we remember his birth and the best of his work. The author of Pedro Páramo was born in the town of Sayula - just a few kilometers from Ciudad Guzmán - in 1917, where he lived until 1934, that is, until he was 17 years old. It should be noted that his childhood and adolescence were strongly marked by the Cristero War, which he took from his father...

Every semester, the largest classroom at Northwestern University in Chicago is filled with hundreds of students who are eager to take a course devoted to Russian literature. The answer as to why comes down to the who. That says something not only about the class, but about the professor who happens to be my guest today. Professor Gary Saul Morson, welcome to Thinking in Public. Gary Saul Morson:Oh, it’s my pleasure to be here. Albert Mohler: Professor, I just want to tell you right up front, this was one of the most significant reading experiences I have had in a...

Sometimes you can feel like you can get more out of reading a single book then you have an entire semester of college. Some of these books might be surprisingly simple to read. Which three books made you feel much more educated and enriched after reading them?

The movie came out on January 25, 2024. There had been very little of the usual promotion. Lockshin’s name was omitted from posters. His name was absent from all marketing materials, such as they were. In any event, the movie was a sensation. The public went to see it, quickly making it the top-grossing Russian movie of all time, in the over-18 category.Furious, the state and its propagandists got to work. As Lockshin says, “a whole campaign” was launched against him and the movie. Propagandists called him a “criminal” and a “terrorist,” and demanded that the movie be pulled from...

Back in January, I posted a thread about Reading Any Good Books and it got over 200 responses. It's been two months. What have you been reading?

Not all those who wander are lostJust like the otherworldly maps which often grace the inner covers of these wondrous books, the realm of fantasy novels is surprisingly wide-ranging, with numerous sub and hybrid genres existing within. From full-blown fantasy featuring witches, dragons, magic and mayhem, to dystopian takes that offer an almost satirical commentary on contemporary reality – the choices are endless and rather daunting, making it difficult to know where to start. An enduring genre nonetheless, it’s particularly fascinating that so much of our adoration for fantasy novels comes from our experience of them as children. When reread...

A long time ago, there was a Free Republic Book Club ... mostly because I opened my mouth and a bunch of people told me to organize one. I haven't pinged it in a long time. (Actually, another book club started, so I stopped.) Any way, has anyone read any good books lately. Fiction, non-fiction, genre, mainstream. Anything you want to share? Has anyone WRITTEN any good books that the rest of us should check out?