Fun with Word Frequency, and Other News

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.