The Evolution Of The Alphabet Over 3,800 Years

Open Culture: The Evolution of the Alphabet: A Colorful Flowchart, Covering 3,800 Years, Takes You From Ancient Egypt to Today

No matter our native language, we all have to learn a writing system. And whichever language we learn, its writing system had to come from somewhere. Take English, the language you're reading right now and one written in Latin script, which it shares with a range of other tongues: the European likes of French, Spanish, and German, of course, but now also Icelandic, Swahili, Tagalog, and a great many more besides. The video above by Matt Baker of UsefulCharts explains just where this increasingly widespread writing system came from, tracing its origins all the way back to the Proto-Sinaitic script of Egypt in 1750 BCE.

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WNU Editor: It is amazing how the alphabet has evolved over the centuries.

What Do Women And Men Read (Infographic)

Ebook Friendly: Sex and reading – what do women and men read (infographic)

A new infographic from Goodreads takes a closer look at reading preferences of women vs men.

What do men and women want when it comes to books? Are they reading their own gender? And what do they think of books written by the opposite sex?

To gather data for the infographic, Goodreads team looked at a sample of 40,000 active members on the site. 20,000 of them were women , 20,000 – men.

Make sure to follow Goodreads blog, as the category-specific reading infographics will be coming in the next weeks.

Tap on the infographic to enlarge it.

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WNU Editor:  No surprise. .... women read two times more than men.

How Much Do The Big Authors Earn By Word?

Title Pro: How Much Are Big Authors Worth Per Word?

What if the world’s wealthiest authors made their money per word? In reality, big-name writers like Stephen King and Nora Roberts get the majority of their pay from movie deals, merchandise, signings, and other avenues, but what if we turned the modern author pay scale into something past authors from the Victorian era had to deal with: pay per word?

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Bookyards editor: J.K. Rowling beats everyone hands-down. She earns$957.66 per word.

Is Twitter Ruining Book Publishing?

Lionel Shriver, Spectator: Why do authors have to be ‘moral’? Because their publishing contracts tell them so

My compulsion to rub strangers up the wrong way in a political sense grows only more enticing.

Suppose you’re a writer with a self-destructive proclivity for sticking your neck out. Would you sign a book contract that would be canceled in the instance of ‘sustained, widespread public condemnation of the author’? Even cautious, congenial writers are working in an era when a bland, self-evident physiological assertion like ‘women don’t have penises’ attracts a school of frenzied piranhas. So journalists would be fools to sign a document voided if, in a magazine’s ‘sole judgment’, they were the subject of ‘public disrepute, contempt, complaints or scandals’.

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WNU Editor: With the world wide web nothing is secret anymore. Hence the morality contracts to accommodate cultural changes.

The History Of Publishing (Infographic)

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Ribbonfish: Infographic: A Concise History of Publishing

The publishing industry has been around in some form since man was first able to write down his thoughts. It’s had its ups and downs throughout the years, from books being banned and burned, to the introduction of new technologies revolutionising the way that books (and digital products) can be manufactured and consumed.

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Bookyards Editor: We have definitely progressed a lot since the Gutenberg press.

Remembering Charles Dickens’s First Visit To New York

Douglas Muzzio, City Journal: When Boz Came to Town

Remembering Charles Dickens’s first visit to New York

On February 12, 1842, after a triumphal three-week stay in Boston and gala receptions and dinners in Worcester, Springfield, and Hartford, Charles Dickens—universally known by his pseudonym, “Boz”—landed at South Street in lower Manhattan on the packet New York from New Haven. When he stepped off the boat with his wife, Catherine (Kate), Dickens was greeted by a throng of cheering admirers, whom the New York Herald described as “perfectly whirlwindish . . . a promiscuous assemblage of bipeds that covered the dock as barnacles a ship’s bottom.” The paper crowed: “At last Boz breathes the balmy atmosphere of the Queen City of the Empire State.”

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WNU Editor: You can browse and download the works by Charles Dickens from here.

This Copy Of Fahrenheit-451 Can Only Be Read If It’s On Fire

Electric Literature: Buy a Copy of Fahrenheit-451 That Can Only Be Read If It’s on Fire

For a mere $451, you can now own a limited-edition heat-sensitive copy of Ray Bradbury’s book

Graphic design studio Super Terrain’s edition of Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi classic Fahrenheit-451 took the internet by storm, thanks to a video showing how its all-black pages become readable text when exposed to an open flame. (This will, and quite possibly should, also work with a hair dryer or something else not completely on fire.) And now, for only $451 — get it? — you can preorder one to keep on a specially-heated shelf in your home! If you have $451 to drop on an artist’s book, we figure you could have custom heated shelves.

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Bookyards editor: At $451 per copy, that is one expensive book.

Here Are 24 Books That Bill Gates Recommended In 2018

Gates Notes

Business Insider: 24 must-read books that Bill Gates recommended in 2018

* We've rounded up Bill Gates' many book recommendations in 2018.
* Over the past year, Gates gave his stamp of approval to more than 20 titles, including two books on meditation.
* In addition to science and data-driven stories, the list features popular books like Trevor Noah's memoir, "Born a Crime," and John Green's "Turtles All the Way Down."

Bill Gates isn't shy about recommending books. As an avid reader, he's given his stamp of approval to hundreds of titles, including some unlikely beach reads.

This year alone, he's highlighted more than 20 books that captured his attention or expanded his worldview.

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WNU Editor: "Army of None" by Paul Scharre is one of my favourites this year.

How Bill Gates Reads Books (Video)

Bookyards editor: The above video was posted a year ago, but it is still relevant today. On a side note .... All the books Bill Gates has recommended over the last eight years (Quartz).

Selection Of 2018's Best Poems To Lift Your Spirits

Daily Mail: Brave, bold and beautiful: Our ultimate selection of this year's best poems to lift your spirits

* Bel Mooney picked out this year's best poetry books that express every feeling
* She Is Fierce edited by Ana Sampson collates beautiful poems by women
* Running Upon The Wires is Kate Tempest's celebration of naked lust
* The Luckiest Guy sparks laughter and questioning everything

There’s a modern cliche that people don’t really read poetry. Yet they need it. At the great stages of life (love affairs, love’s ending, weddings, babies, funerals) they will seek readings to express their own feelings.

A well-loved poem can penetrate to the heart of human feelings; that’s why we tend to return to old favourites for uplift and comfort.

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Bookyards editor: Bookyards has over 500 ebooks on poems and poetry that you can browse and download. The link is here.

Why You Should Surround Yourself With More Books

Fast Company: Why you should surround yourself with more books than you’ll ever have time to read

An overstuffed bookcase (or e-reader) says good things about your mind.

Lifelong learning will help you be happier, earn more, and even stay healthier, experts say. Plus, plenty of the smartest names in business, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk, insist that the best way to get smarter is to read. So what do you do? You go out and buy books, lots of them.

But life is busy, and intentions are one thing, actions another. Soon you find your shelves (or e-reader) overflowing with titles you intend to read one day, or books you flipped through once but then abandoned. Is this a disaster for your project to become a smarter, wiser person?

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Bookyards editor: I definitely do not have the time to read my books, but I continue to buy more..

Loud Eating In The Library! (Video)

Bookyards editor: This video is to the extreme, but I have had my share of people eating to loud in a library.

11,000 Digitized Books From 1923 Are Now Available Online

Open Culture: 11,000 Digitized Books From 1923 Are Now Available Online at the Internet Archive

Whether your interest is in winning arguments online or considerably deepening your knowledge of world cultural and intellectual history, you will be very well-served by at least one government agency from now into the foreseeable future. Thanks to the expiration of the so-called "Micky Mouse Protection Act," the U.S. Copyright Office will release a year’s worth of art, literature, scholarship, photography, film, etc. into the public domain, starting with 1923 this year then moving through the 20th century each subsequent year.

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Bookyards' Editor: This is long overdue.