Dar­win­ma­nia (as The New York Times dubbed it) is about to begin. Dur­ing the next year, we will cel­e­brate Dar­win’s 200th birth­day and the 150th anniver­sary of the Ori­gin of Species (down­load zip audio here) and the dis­cov­ery of nat­ur­al selec­tion. It’s pret­ty much a giv­en that the minu­ti­ae of Dar­win’s life will get thor­ough­ly reex­am­ined. So I fig­ured why not get ahead of the curve and give you this — Dar­win’s writ­ing room. It’s pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of the Guardian Book Sec­tion, which lets you take a peek at the writ­ings rooms of Vir­ginia Woolf, Lord Byron, Rud­yard Kipling, Mar­tin Amis and many oth­er impor­tant writ­ers. (You can also vis­it our piece from last year for more room pho­tos.)

The Har­ry Pot­ter pre­quel that JK Rowl­ing wrote for char­i­ty is now avail­able online. To read it, click here, then click “Read our authors’ sto­ries,” and then click JK Rowl­ing.

Relat­ed:

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grad­u­ates What They Need to Know

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This is a clever web site cre­at­ed by the folks at the New Zealand Book Coun­cil. The site cre­ates a repli­ca of a PC desk­top envi­ron­ment, and, with­in the fold­ers, you’ll find texts that can be read on the sly.

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As I write, the most emailed arti­cle on The New York Times offers a few reflec­tions on Peter Box­al­l’s book, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. The Times piece makes a cou­ple of log­i­cal points: First, there’s no time to waste if you hope to read every book on the list. Read­ing a book per month, you’ll get through 1000 books in a mere 83 years. So you had bet­ter get start­ed now. Sec­ond, this “best of” list is bound to be con­tro­ver­sial. (Do you real­ly need to read Anne Rice’s “Inter­view With the Vam­pire” before it’s lights out?) The 1001 books on Box­al­l’s list can be pre­viewed here. The book itself, which runs 960 pages, is obvi­ous­ly more than a raw list. Each entry is accom­pa­nied by an “author­i­ta­tive yet opin­ion­at­ed crit­i­cal essay describ­ing the impor­tance and influ­ence of the work in ques­tion.” And also there’s appar­ent­ly some nice illus­tra­tions. If you’re a bib­lio­phile, it’s worth a look.

For more great books, see the col­lec­tion of Life Chang­ing Books cre­at­ed by our read­ers.

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