The exclamation point arrived in the middle of the 14th century, bringing what many felt was “a welcome infusion of emotion onto the page,” and was joined, over the 15th century, by parentheses and the apostrophe. - The Wall Street Journal
Magic Box, a Mongolian NGO (non-governmental agency) has hatched a program to turn old shipping containers into a constellation of children’s libraries throughout rural Mongolia. And they now the program will catch on anywhere children need books, and a place to call their own. - Publishing Perspectives
“Thoreau warned us that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. In China today, that desperation has been given a name: Neijuan — involution. … If Thoreau were alive today, he might say that China has industrialized quiet desperation. The pushback has a name too: tang ping — lying flat.” - Literary Hub
Penguin Random House has suspended promotion and public sales of a forthcoming book by journalist Ross Barkan following allegations of extensive plagiarism in political columns he wrote as a freelancer for New York Magazine. - Washington Post
The amount of fiction people read seems to be a better predictor of language ability than nonfiction, research finds. And, perhaps even more importantly, research has found that fiction is linked to better social cognition and an increased understanding of the world as a complex place. - Washington Post
Either human speech and AI speech progressively assimilate, causing a collapse in any meaningful distinction, or language becomes a contested social signal. This second scenario would essentially be a game of whack-a-mole across the English language. - Washington Post
Matt Dinan, of St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada, had somehow never read the Dostoevsky classic before last semester. He found himself completely consumed by the novel — and then found his students equally taken with it. The reasons they gave for being so excited were telling. - The New York Times
I call this point in a novel its volta. The term comes from poetry, where it denotes a shift that sonnets exhibit between their opening octave and concluding sestet or between their first 12 lines and final couplet. - Public Books
The spectacular implosions of big book deals over suspected AI use—and fears about who might be next—are forcing a reckoning over the nature of authorship, the relationship between writers and publishers and the industry’s long-term survival. - The Wall Street Journal
The booksellers are wondering how they’re supposed to feel. Tey’re "are “uncomfortable with the idea of books being destroyed - even if they admit not every title needs to be saved.” - BBC
From the editors: “Rather than translating existing work from The Rumpus, El Alboroto will commission and publish original Spanish-language writing spanning cultural criticism, personal essays, interviews, fiction, poetry and comics.” - LitHub
“You can still type a symbol originally invented for Cicero nearly 21 centuries ago — at least if you configure your keyboard properly.” - Open Culture
