Melville House Books

Ellie Robins

Ellie Robins is an editor at Melville House. Previously, she was managing editor of Hesperus Press.

• That whale is out there

  Did you know that there are whales alive today that were born before Moby-Dick was written? Being an acute cetaphobe I’ve had to conduct my research from halfway beneath my… Read more »

• Study: Facebook is more memorable than books

  Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of California, San Diego have found that the brain remembers posts on Facebook and other social media significantly better than sentences picked… Read more »

• Girls in a bookstore

  It’d be hard to top the achingly cool bookish setting that opened the first season of GIRLS, but Lena had to give it a try. Sunday night’s second-season premiere featured… Read more »

• PEN Turkey under investigation for ‘insulting the state’

  Despite the welcome news — reported on MobyLives on Tuesday — that a ban has been lifted on 23,000 books in Turkey, the situation for freedom of expression in the… Read more »

• More people than ever using New York’s public libraries

  Start spreading the news: use of New York City’s libraries has increased dramatically in the past decade. A study conducted by the Center for an Urban Future and published yesterday found… Read more »

• Turkey lifts ban on thousands of books

  23,000 books banned over the course of decades can now be printed freely… Read more »

• The Tory party speaks: Libraries are for ‘luvvies’

  The British Tory MP and Communities Secretary (!) Eric Pickles has shown his party’s true colours by referring to those concerned about library closures as ‘luvvies’. During heated words in… Read more »

• Translating between Englishes: Is it really necessary?

  Tim Parks is frustrated. Writing in an excellent post at the NYRBlog, he details the process of editing his new book about Italy and train travel, which will be published… Read more »

• Hans Christian Andersen’s first fairy tale found

  This is a seasonably heartwarming story: a local historian in Denmark has found a hitherto unknown fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen at the bottom of a 15 kilo archive… Read more »

• This is your brain; this is your brain on books

  It’s not only what we read — but thinking rigorously about it that’s of value… Read more »