Jane Smiley

The New York Times' John Williams interviews humorist Joe Queenan about his new book, One for the Books. On the future of print books, which Queenan prefers to ebooks, he is blunt:

"Books, I think, are dead. You cannot fight the zeitgeist and you cannot fight corporations. The genius of corporations is that they force you to make decisions about how you will live your life and then beguile you into thinking that it was all your choice. Compact discs are not superior to vinyl. E-readers are not superior to books."

—Brian Howard

Jane Smiley, author, "Private Life" Reading fiction is and always was about learning to see the world through often quite alien perspectives. This remains essential. Matt de la Peña, author, "Mexican WhiteBoy" Kafka believed a book should wake us up with a blow to the head. But we don’t want our novels to do that anymore. Robin Sloan, writer and media inventor New and maturing media are not a threat to the novel, but a reminder of why it has endured. Thomas Glave, author, "The Torturer's Wife" The ways in which we respond to the work of art in

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