There's bad news from the US, where reading scores are declining, just when they are making real improvements in many countries across the world.
Basic literacy is at an all-time high across the world and most countries have seen steadily rising reading achievements in the last decade, as is shown by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. Read more
'Writing is of you, but it's not YOU'
'I like David Foster Wallace's notion that writer's block is always a function of the writer having set a too-high bar for herself. You know: you type a line, it fails to meet the "masterpiece standard," you delete it in shame, type another line, delete it - soon the hours have flown by and you are a failure sitting in front of a blank screen. Read more