Literature News

"Hobbit" star Richard Armitage may not be a method actor in the strictest sense of the phrase, but he certainly took extensive preparations to get into the role of J.R.R. Tolkien's dwarf king, Thorin Oakenshield.

The Annals of Applied Statistics , Vol. 7, No. 2. , pp. 1010-1039, doi:10.1214/12-aoas617 We describe a network clustering framework, based on finite mixture models, that can be applied to discrete-valued networks with hundreds of thousands of nodes and billions of edge variables.

The Yorkshire Post looks back on December/Christmas 1893. Among other things, this is what was happening: December did bring some lighter news.

Chance Theater presents the fifth show of its 15th Anniversary Season - a family-friendly holiday offering The Secret Garden - The Musical with book and lyrics by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Marsha Norman , music by Tony Award nominee Lucy Simon , and directed by Casey Long and KC Wilkerson.

We asked some of our contributors for their favorite books they read this year. Here's the first installment.

BOOK REVIEW: Stone's familiar themes are on display here, but they have become predictable and his exploration heavy-handed.

The Trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation are pleased to announce that the jurors for the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize are: English Canadian literature professor and critic Coral Ann Howells PhD; editor, publisher and arts consultant James Polk, PhD; and writer, lecturer and former CTP winner Andrew Westoll, MFA.

Hey there, befuddled aunts, uncles and family friends. Not sure what to get for all those nieces, nephews and offspring of other people? This year we've included kids' titles in our year-end best books roundup.

This past summer, the Ridgefield Library included a MOOC as part of its adult summer reading program.

RosettaBooks has released three Oscar Hijuelos works as eBooks, including The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love , for which he was the first Latino to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1990, Our House in the Last World, and The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien.

The best writers in Scotland, including Christopher Brookmyre, John Burnside and Janice Galloway, pick out the creme de la creme of 2013's books The books I have enjoyed reading most this year all seem to deal with the American Dream and the way it leads the individual into tragedy and self-knowledge.

John R. Fultz lives in the Bay Area, California, but is originally from Kentucky.

The Rumson Country Day School's Parent Council kicked off the holiday season by celebrating literary classics at its annual book fair.

BUCKET LIST for THE ECCENTRIC WOMAN: 1. Give Tinker Bell a run for her fairy dust! Why not? 2. Shop GipsyDharma.com! During Europe's Victorian era, the age-old belief in magical fairies was reinvented and romanticized in English children's literature, hence, the subsequent derivation of the word " fairy-tale" .

"Human history seems logical in afterthought but a mystery in forethought. In every prior Fourth Turning, the catalyst was foreseeable but the climax was not."

Kent University's School of English came under fire this past week after it implied that children's fiction wasn't "great literature."

Required Reading is a group art show at Gallery1988 in Los Angeles featuring a wide variety of artwork based on classic literature.

As the semester wraps up, hell week may have some students a bit fed up with reading.

Of all the scrawled signatures, well-wishes and wisecracks in my senior high school yearbook, the one I treasure most was penned by my English teacher.

Inspired by her children to become an author, Noura Al No'man's goal to expand the science fiction genre in Arabic literature has seen her first novel Ajwan be one of five books to compete for the Best Young Adult Book Etisalat Award with plans to transform the story into a television series.