Prospero
Bookstore troubles

Is it time to reinvent the library?

Rethinking what they look like, what they offer and how they store their wares More »

More Intelligent Life
The xx

Stardom by stealth

Shy, anonymous and without a hit single, The xx have somehow become the band of the moment. Hazel Sheffield has tracked their rise More »

Five Things

The Sheikh's Batmobile

A tour through 17 Muslim countries in search of local interpretations of American culture More »

Drinking

Pina coladaville

You wouldn't expect to find a tiki bar at the storefront of 49 Essex Street in the Lower East Side More »

Books of the month
Audio: Fiction

Our books and arts editor discusses Jonathan Franzen’s "Freedom", the Booker prize judging process and its long list More »

What we're reading

Brain exercises
(Discovery News)
So much for avoiding dementia. Good lord, we're damned

Online freedom in Russia
(Spiegel Online)
Russians in search of uncensored news are damned, too

"Chick lit" be damned
(Guardian)
Lionel Shriver makes a compelling case that a "female novelist would never enjoy a Franzen-scale frenzy of adulation in America" 

Today's quote

"When I got here four years ago, the only live venue in Shanghai was Yuyintang, which had started four months earlier [tacked on] the side of Ikea. It was just a shed, with a room about twice the size of my office with no fridge. They served beer out of a warm bucket... That was the only live venue in a city of 20-odd million people"

Archie Hamilton, a music promoter in China, on the country's fledgling music scene; "China Rocks" (Telegraph

Highlights
The future of the internet

A virtual counter-revolution

The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it More »

Online television

Hogging the remote

Old-media firms are firmly in control of internet video More »

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Latest blog posts - All times are GMT

Giving away Dan Brown
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Link exchange
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Reading material
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World's richest athlete
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