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Fun with Word Frequency, and Other News

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On the Shelf

wordfrequency

  • See how many times a word or phrase is used in a book! Hours of … okay, maybe not fun, but hours.
  • New research suggests that there exists a family of “ultraconserved words”—including ashes, man, worm, and not—that have survived, virtually unchanged, for fifteen thousand years.
  • Amanda Knox tells the Times what she reads. Among others: Marilynne Robinson, Vladimir Nabokov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jonathan Safran Foer, and David Foster Wallace.
  • The Harper Lee copyright fracas inspires a list of literary lawsuits.
  • “I’ve been getting death threats.” Charlaine Harris on the end of Sookie Stackhouse.
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