Suspend Your Disbelief

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Maybe just one more cup…

I know few writers who need another reason for another cup of coffee. But if you need more convincing, how about your health? The reasoning isn’t yet understood, but it’s possible that coffee has health benefits beyond the mental satisfaction of finishing that chapter. This week, the New York Times Wellness blog cited researchers at the National Cancer Institute who have found a correlation between increased coffee intake and decreased risk of colon cancer.  LiveScience also wrote this week about the possibility that drinking coffee could “reduce the risk of basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer.” […]


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Evolution or Devolution: Where is literature taking us?

The following guest post is by Josie Keenan, an FWR intern and second-year student at the University of Michigan. More and more these days, I find myself bemoaning the fate of books. As Lee discussed in her recent blog “Let’s get digital”, downloadable books have been available for some time now. Digitization is one aspect of the way literature is changing, but what we are reading is also changing. Where novels were once belabored, deeply considered works in which every word of every sentence was deliberately placed, today it seems a more manufacturable task. One can write a novel just […]


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Save Time to Save Words

During the holidays, everyone seems to be rushing to get something or other done. If it’s not buying presents or attending parties, many of us are traveling to visit friends and family. And at least here in Michigan, where winter has set in, people are hurrying everywhere, trying to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible. But getting there is half the fun, right? Earlier this year, the Oxford English Dictionary launched its “Save the Words” campaign. It promises to make getting around (alas, only conversationally) more fun while saving words that are falling out of […]



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