#invasion-christmas-carol

#invasion-christmas-carol

For decades, two watercolors hung unassumingly in a family home in London. Only recently did the residents discover the works' storied pedigree: they are original illustrations created for a 1903 edition of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book , which were long thought lost. Now, the two watercolors, which depict scenes from Kipling's celebrated collection of short stories, are emerging on the auction block at Roseberys in London.

Enrigue's 'penchant for shooting the facts of history through the prism of the absurd' makes him singular-but it also puts him firmly in a long literary tradition. The book 'distills a byzantine swirl of historical events through the lives of a handful of very colorful characters,' intertwining several real and invented incidents with major moments in the Apache Wars, a series of skirmishes involving Native Americans, the U.S., and Mexico across the Southwest borderlands.

Research has linked reading for pleasure in childhood to a host of positive educational and socioeconomic outcomes. But now 14 years after the Department for Education, in a more innocent time, commissioned a chunky report on the matter—reading books for pleasure is an activity in crisis. The culprit usually blamed for this falling-off is the smartphone and its many short-term distractions; the mere presence of a smartphone in the room, recent research suggests, has an impact on our ability to concentrate.