The Open Road Blog

This week's featured excerpt spotlights one of the nation's most distinctive voices on women and sexuality: award-winning poet, novelist, and memoirist Erica Jong. In 1973, Jong published Fear of Flying, a book about a woman trying to find herself and learn how to fly free of her repressions. Isadora Wing seeks to discover her soul and her sexuality, and in the process, she delves into erotic fantasy and experimentation, shocking many critics—but delighting readers. Partially drawing on Jong’s early life, as well as her wild imagination, the book was hailed by John Updike as the female answer to Portnoy’s Complaint and ...

Editor’s Note: Richelle Mead speaks out on behalf of Banned Books Week. Richelle Mead is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of urban fantasy books for both adults and teens. Read more about her books here.

People have banned books for various reasons throughout human history. Sometimes it's offense over language, violence, or sexual content. Sometimes it's because books put out messages that challenge governments, religion, or other societal ideas. Whatever the reason behind it, banning books is still a type of censorship; it takes away someone's choice to read the book and make up his ...

Oliver Reichenstein of IA makes an astute case for a "Business Class for News," which, as a long-time happy subscriber to Ars Technica's Premium Service, I think has much greater potential to be a viable business model for publishers than does a traditional paywall. 

Cory Doctorow in the Guardian has a great, quick write-up of the recently-released "Media Piracy in Emerging Economies" report: 

"This weighty, 440-page report took thirty-five researchers three years to produce, and it is a careful, thoroughly documented rebuttal of practically everything you've ever heard or read about copyright infringement in the ...