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    2 Books to Bring Key West to Life

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    A poet’s letters; a collection of reminiscences.Maggie Steber for The New York TimesDear readers,“An endless party sounds fun in theory,” writes Kristy McGinnis’s narrator in the novel “Motion of Intervals,” but “the body and mind can only take so much. Some people show up here hoping it’s the answer to all of their problems and figure out too late that they actually brought the problems with them.”What could she be describing but Key West? Dissipated, legend-fogged, magical, menacing, inspiring, dispiriting, disporting, precarious, reckless, crummy, stunning, scored by the caws of jungle-fowl and the chords of acoustic guitar covers, gallantly drunk in the face of hurricane-driven annihilation, the Conch Republic (capital: Margaritaville) is an eternal muse.—Sadie“One Art: Letters,” by Elizabeth BishopNonfiction, 1994We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is It Ethical to Buy Used Books and Music?

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      The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on what consumers owe to artists.Is it ethical to buy used books and music instead of new copies that will financially reward the author or artist? What do consumers owe to producers of art? — Gerald BarkerFrom the Ethicist:There’s actually a lot to be said for buying used and sustaining the low-cost democracy of art’s second life. For one thing, there are environmental advantages in the practice: Physical media are designed to endure and be shared beyond the first owner. And artists can benefit from secondary markets in real, if less tangible, ways. Works that circulate widely can enhance the artist’s reputation, whether it’s a book read and passed along, a record rediscovered in a thrift shop or a painting resold at auction. Enthusiastic new audiences, prominent displays and word-of-mouth appreciation can all contribute to a creator’s stature. (Notice that this situation is very different from music-streaming platforms, where artists are basically meant to be paid for each listen, but the recompense is often a pittance.)What artists, especially the good ones, are owed is not a cut of every encounter we have with their work but a system that gives them a real opportunity to sell their work, to build a career, to find a public. After that, their creations rightly become part of the wider cultural world, as with books in a library or paintings in a museum, where countless people can enjoy them freely across the generations.Used-book stores or vintage-record shops, where hidden gems lurk like geodes waiting to be split open, play a role, too. Such venues don’t just preserve art; they bring enthusiasts together, spark conversations and cultivate new audiences. In Michael Chabon’s novel “Telegraph Avenue,” a vintage-record shop is both a community hub and a battlefront for cultural preservation; in Helene Hanff’s book “84, Charing Cross Road,” treasured titles help sustain a human connection across an ocean. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I stumbled across both in used-book stores, providing their authors no royalties but plenty of affection. This setup isn’t a failure of fairness; it’s part of how creative work gains cultural traction.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Test Yourself on Memorable Lines From Popular Novels

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      Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that challenges you to match a book’s memorable lines with its title. This week’s installment is focused on popular 20th-century novels. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books themselves if you want to get a copy and see that quotation in context. More

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      What It Means to Be a ‘Well Woman,’ According to Amy Larocca, Author of ‘How to Be Well’

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      In her new book, “How to Be Well,” the writer Amy Larocca draws readers down a rabbit hole of serums, supplements and colonics. We know a lot of it doesn’t work. Why do we want it anyway?When I met the writer Amy Larocca at a cafe in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn on a recent afternoon, I could not help but notice: She had the glow. Or seemed to.The glow, as Ms. Larocca explains in her new book, “How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time,” is what happens when you purify yourself “from the inside out.” When you never miss a day of your skin care routine, regularly drain your lymphatic fluids and take your collagen supplements. But to truly glow, you must also practice mindfulness, self-care and, ideally, transcendental meditation, avoid processed junk and sleep at least eight hours every night.Such are the exacting standards of a contemporary wellness culture that has swelled to encompass nearly every facet of life. Not just the serums we slather on our faces or the Pilates classes we scurry off to but the food we eat (always whole foods), the bowel movements we pass (must be “firm and beautifully formed”) and the very thoughts we let enter our minds (intentional ones only).It sounds like a lot of work. Or one might say it sounds like a lot of work — if it were not so incumbent on a well woman to be perpetually at ease.After talking to Ms. Larocca, 49, for an hour, I learned she did not do everything a well woman should. She tries to sleep a lot. She exercises regularly. And yes, she wears an Oura ring, the latest in wearable tech for tracking one’s blood oxygen rate, body temperature and other biometrics.But she does not observe 12-step routines of any kind. She is aware of the fact that dry-brushing may be a great way to exfoliate but that it probably does not drain your lymphatic fluid.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Longevity Expert’s 5 Tips for Aging Well

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      In his new book, “Super Agers,” the cardiologist Dr. Eric Topol argues that we now have the tools to age better than our predecessors.About two decades ago, a California research team observed a striking phenomenon: While a majority of older adults have at least two chronic diseases, some people reach their 80s without major illness.The researchers suspected the key to healthier aging was genetic. But after sequencing the genomes of 1,400 of these aging outliers — a cohort they called the “Wellderly” — they found almost no difference between their biological makeup and that of their peers. They were, however, more physically active, more social and typically better educated than the general public.That genes don’t necessarily determine healthy aging is “liberating,” and suggests that “we can pretty much all do better” to delay disease, said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and the founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, which ran the Wellderly study.Dr. Topol is a prominent molecular scientist who has published 1,300 research articles, has written multiple books and has several hundred thousand followers across social media and his newsletter. His newest book, “Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity,” out on Tuesday, delves into the rapidly evolving science of aging.In the book, Dr. Topol writes that tools like biological age tests and increasingly sophisticated health risk prediction could eventually paint a clearer picture of how we’re aging.With these tools and new scientific insight into how lifestyle drives the biological breakdown that comes with age, he writes, we can now do more than ever to delay that process. While we’re all more likely to get diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer and diabetes as we get older, these illnesses can develop over the course of decades — which gives us a “long runway” to try to counter them, Dr. Topol said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Try This Mark Twain Literary Quiz

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      Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about literary culture. This week’s installment tests your knowledge of Mark Twain, one of America’s most popular authors. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to further reading on the topic. More

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      MrBeast and James Patterson Are Writing a Novel Together

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      Jimmy Donaldson, known to his social media fans as MrBeast, is teaming up with the mega-best-selling thriller author.Jimmy Donaldson — better known to his hundreds of millions of online followers as MrBeast — has leveraged his vast social media audience to sell everything from Beast-branded burgers, snack packs and chocolate bars to water bottles, toys, basketballs and $65 hoodies.Now, he’s aiming to sell his followers an unlikely new product: a novel.Donaldson is teaming up with the mega-best-selling author James Patterson on a thriller, which will be published by HarperCollins in 2026, with a simultaneous global release in 15 languages. The plot sounds like an over-the-top version of one of MrBeast’s viral YouTube videos, competitions that often offer enormous sums of cash to contestants who can prevail in absurd challenges (“Survive 100 Days Trapped, Win $500,000”).The novel will center on an extreme global contest, in which 100 players compete to prove their leadership skills by surviving life-threatening tests in dangerous locations around the world. In a battle to win the billion-dollar prize, participants form relationships and betray one another as they struggle to avoid elimination, or death.The fight to land the project also turned into an intense competition among publishers, who were tantalized by the viral marketing possibilities of signing a social media star with 500 million followers. News of the collaboration began circulating in March, with reports of a heated bidding war with offers in the eight-figure range. HarperCollins did not disclose the financial details of the deal, which was negotiated by Robert Barnett and Deneen Howell of Williams & Connolly on behalf of Patterson, and by Byrd Leavell and Albert Lee at United Talent Agency representing MrBeast.It’s unclear whether MrBeast’s massive online audience will translate into book sales. Publishers have tried for decades to harness the marketing power of social media stars, with varying success. But MrBeast is a star of a different magnitude.“He’s such a smart operator in understanding the social media algorithms, what drives engagement, what drives activation,” said Brian Murray, president and chief executive of HarperCollins. “One of the challenges we have in publishing is there’s so much noise out there in the media and entertainment landscape, and trying to break through with books can be difficult.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      2 Books to Read Instead of Meditating

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      A gentle and clever comic novel; a poetic and tender essay on addiction.Édouard Manet/Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial CollectionDear readers,Anyone who is bad at meditating will be familiar with the tension that obtains when you try to force serenity. Nothing could be more aggravating than being told to relax — especially when you’re issuing the order yourself.In lieu of attempting to clear my head through more direct means, I’ve been gravitating toward contemplative novels and poetry this spring. Two of them below, for your consideration.—Molly“Judgement Day,” by Penelope LivelyFiction, 1980First, the place. Laddenham is a country village in England The time is 1980-ish. Light industry is booming and new houses are going up to capture prosperous overspill from London.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More