Words

“The personal touch sometimes takes some of the critical edge out of books conversation online. Like many outlets, Bustle is fazing out professional book reviews, and Electric Literature did away with its reviews a couple of years ago now. Instead, these websites are prioritizing personal essays from a diverse group of writers, and both of the aforementioned sites have a women-focused editorial strategy.” – Publishers Weekly

“It tells us that wars are hell, but we knew that already. It tells us that most human beings are not so bad, except for the ones who are, and that’s valuable information. It doesn’t tell us how to get to the planet Tralfamadore, but it does tell us how to communicate with its inhabitants. All we have to do is build something big, like the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China.”- The New Yorker

On the backs of pictures that photographer Hank O’Neal took of the marches in the 1970s, Ginsberg commented in Ginsbergian style. “Black white brown boy girl what idealism! — Wearing their hearts on a banner for nothing but love” – Hyperallergic

The decision came despite strong opposition from the owner of the Strand, Nancy Bass Wyden, who argued that the designation would mire the bookstore “in a lifetime of needless red tape.” – Publishers Weekly

In fact, writes Michael Dirda, the tale came from one Antoine Galland, an early-18th-century Orientalist who was the first Westerner to translate the actual Thousand and One Nights from the Arabic. He was working from a manuscript that had only 35 stories in it — and, when his translations became hits, he (not unlike Sheherazad herself) had to come up with more material to meet reader demand. – The Washington Post

Emily Ruskovich’s Idaho has won the €100,000 International Dublin Literary Award, for which books are nominated by libraries around the world. She said that when she first got news of the prize, she thought she was hallucinating. – The Guardian

“No one living, of course, knows exactly what it sounded like, so scholars make their best educated guesses using internal evidence in the scant literature, secondary sources in other languages from the time, and similarities to other, living languages.” And here are some of those educated guesses, applied to excerpts from Beowulf, prayers, and even a casual conversation. – Open Culture

“Prison language, or language created by inmates while incarcerated, has a long and vivid history, and is likely as old as the modern prison itself.” Says linguist Julie Colman, “It’s quite a fertile place for a language to develop. You’ve got a literally captive audience and a very dense social network.” – Canvas

Founded in 1971, the worldwide chain enjoyed decades of dominance in the book retail market — until the internet blew up. – New York Magazine

The hedge fund that bought the beleaguered Barnes & Noble last week also owns Waterstones, the UK’s leading bookstore chain, which had been suffering from similar troubles. So the new owners are sending over to B&N the man who led Waterstones back to profitability, James Daunt. Can he revive the U.S. chain? “I have done it before,” he says, “the scale is a lot bigger, but so are the resources available.” – Publishers Weekly

Last month The Atlantic published an essay by an Elizabethan scholar that suggested that “an Elizabethan writer named Emilia Bassano might have had a hand, or more, in the creation of William Shakespeare’s work.” Now the magazine has asked five Shakespeare experts to weigh in on the idea. – The Atlantic

Belonging to the London cluster made writers substantially more productive. The study found that “the average writer in London saw their productivity go up by 12 percent. By comparison, writers in smaller clusters, in Dublin, Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge, saw no such gains. Furthermore, being part of the London cluster increased the likelihood of an author having their work published in any given year by 24 percent.” – CityLab

Barnes & Noble will probably never be the cultural and commercial force it once was, even if it doesn’t end up quite those dire straits. It has missed too many opportunities by now. But it still has a chance to write a next chapter that doesn’t include its demise.   – Bloomberg

Returning to the book itself is something of a tonic against despair, but: “We are living with a new kind of regime that didn’t exist in Orwell’s time. It combines hard nationalism—the diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatred—with soft distraction and confusion: a blend of Orwell and Huxley, cruelty and entertainment.” And we chose it ourselves. – The Atlantic

Well then, you become obsessed with theoretical physics, of course. Just ask Nell Freudenberger. Freudenberger “was, like so many other young women, encouraged to believe she didn’t ‘have the right kind of brain for it.’ After doing badly in a maths test in her teens, she was told by a teacher that she might as well quit.” – The Guardian (UK)

Svetlana Alexiévich published Voices from Chernobyl in 1997, 11 years after the catastrophe. Now, a new HBO miniseries is bringing the story to life for a new generation – “but for Alexiévich and the former citizens of the USSR who were living in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia at that time, it is still life.” – El País (Spain)

Linda Fairstein published 24 books after retiring as a prosecutor, but the new Netflix series When They See Us shows her “determined to see the boys convicted, regardless of inconsistencies and evidence that suggested their innocence.” That may be dramatized – and she has threatened a lawsuit – but the fallout has been swift. – The New York Times

A University of Washington professor worked hard to get the overlooked and forgotten 1957 book No-No Boy republished through the university press, and it’s become an Asian American literary success story. Then Penguin Classics stepped in. “Dorothea Okada, John Okada’s daughter, said her family was unaware of any issues with their claim to the copyright, and that the family wasn’t contacted by Penguin before the new edition was published.” – The New York Times

The author, or is that “the author,” of a new book that emerged from a diary found in 2004, says that she learned to write while reshaping the diary into a book, and that there’s a certain cost to that: “By selecting and shaping the material in this way I’ve distorted, misrepresented the ‘real life’ of the diary to suit my purposes—or, as Davis says, I’ve made it into a fiction.” – The Millions

“People trust books. When they read books by experts, they often assume that they’re as serious, and as carefully verified, as scientific papers — or at least that there’s some vetting in place. But often, that faith is misplaced. There are no good mechanisms to make sure books are accurate, and that’s a problem.” – Vox

“A quarterly that began publishing in the spring of 1999, [Tin House] quickly set itself apart, injecting the staid world of literary magazines with humor, adventurous design and an expansive editorial mission that mixed risky work by new and established writers. This month, Tin House will publish its 80th and final issue.” Nicole Rudick looks at what made the journal so special and talks with the people who made it happen. – The New York Times

Publishers Lunch’s Michael Cader writes that the deal is for “a modest $6.50 per share,” putting the value of the transaction at some $477 million, “plus the assumption of long-term debt makes the cash purchase ‘valued at’ approximately $683 million.” – Publishers Weekly

“I don’t feel respected as a reader when I feel like the subtitle was created not to give me a feeling of what kind of reading experience I may get, but for search engines.”  – Washington Post

“As the baby boom was hitting its peak and Sputnik was prompting much hand-wringing about the state of American education, a vigorous debate over literacy was beginning to take shape, and [Theodor Seuss] Geisel found himself thrust to the forefront of the battle.” – The New Yorker

“Jones’s portrait of a young African-American’s wrongful incarceration and its devastating impact on his marriage … [won over] last year’s Booker winner, Anna Burns’s Milkman, and former Booker winner Pat Barker’s new novel, The Silence of the Girls.” – The Guardian

“Hong Kong once churned out a broad range of books focused on China’s modern history and Communist Party politics, from thinly sourced potboilers churned out under pen names to respected works of analysis by top authors. … But the industry has declined thanks to tighter border checks, the consolidation of Hong Kong distributors and retail outlets under mainland control, and the disappearance and imprisonment of independent booksellers.” – The New York Times