quote [ ?The Papalagi??supposedly written by a Samoan chief in 1920?offered a societal critique, but carried on a problematic racial trope. ]

quote [ CAMP RULE #2: Fairy rings are generally benign. If there are the remains of a small animal inside the ring, however, inform camp management immediately. CAMP RULE #3 Don?t follow the lights. I can?t believe I even have to say this one. Don?t follow the lights! ]

quote [ It?s like Medieval Times, with a kiss of psychedelia. A book in which strange globules float freely, alien plants shimmy across the pages, and female figures slide into a pool of green plasma. Binding them all together? A beautiful, albeit entirely indecipherable script by an unknown author. The ?Voynich Manuscript,? is an ancient codex that after even 600 years has yet to be credited to anyone or cracked by the brightest philosophers, mathematicians or computer scientists. ]

quote [ American fiction of the 19th century often featured a ghoulish figure, the cruel doctor, whose unfeeling fascination with bodily suffering readers found both unnerving and entirely plausible. Looking at novels by Louisa May Alcott, James Fenimore Cooper, and Herman Melville, Chelsea Davis dissects this curious character. ]

quote [ So it?s no surprise that Spider-Man: Life Story #1 is a Spider-Man story ? except for when it isn?t. Sure, it?s definitely about Peter in the ?60s, not long after he was bitten by everyone?s favorite radioactive spider, but it?s also a look into just what some of Marvel?s other A-Listers were doing at the time. By revising Marvel Comics history with a modern eye and blending it with Marvel Universe history, Life Story #1 does what the real comics of the ?60s didn?t, couldn?t.

It takes an honest look at where Captain America would have stood on the Vietnam War. ]

quote [ Literary analysts have long noticed the hand of another author in Shakespeare?s Henry VIII. Now a neural network has identified the specific scenes in question?and who actually wrote them. ]

quote [ John Milton?s Paradise Lost has been many things to many people ? a Christian epic, a comment on the English Civil War, the epitome of poetic ambiguity ? but it is first of all a pleasure to read. Drawing on sources as varied as Wordsworth, Hitchcock, and Conan Doyle, author Philip Pullman considers the sonic beauty and expert storytelling of Milton's masterpiece, and the influence it has had on his own work. ]