On the Shelf

A cultural news roundup.

Theodore Roszak, a chronicler of the 1960s who coined the term counterculture, died this week at 77.

Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story “Hitting Budapest.”

Penelope Lively calls Kindle readers “bloodless nerds.”

In the spirit of “misery loves company,” the Web site My Unfinished Novels encourages frustrated writers to “share your creative failures.”

Science fiction and religion.

Harry Potter and religion.

Miami artist Agustina Woodgate calls herself a “poetry bomber”: she sews tiny bits of poetry into garments in area thrift stores. “Sewing poems in clothes is a way of bringing poetry to everyday life just by displacing it, by removing it from a paper to integrate it and fuse it with our lives. Sometimes little details are stronger when they are separated from where they are expected to be,” she says.

A brief history of title design.

Reading retreats: book lovers’ dream vacations.

Bill Keller is tired of his reporters who want to write books.

Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca gets the Broadway treatment, for good or ill.