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Agatha Christie, Historian Of Forensic Science

"Her desire for procedural accuracy and the developments in criminology and medicolegal sciences her writing tracks show clearly the progression of forensics into the field of study it now is." - CrimeReads

Maryland’s E-Book Public Library Law About To Be Overturned

First introduced in January 2021, the Maryland e-book law required any publisher offering to license "an electronic literary product" to consumers in the state to also offer to license the content to public libraries "on reasonable terms." - Publishers Weekly

Is TikTok The Future Of Book Publishing?

 Obscure backlist titles are being thrust into the spotlight, generating sales of hundreds of thousands of copies. Every chain bookstore now prominently displays BookTok titles, pushing Oprah’s selections back to the next table. - Publishers Weekly

Those Magazines Of Conspicuous Consumption As The World’s Financial Insecurities Grow

“We engage wealth as a journalistic subject. Tom Wolfe called it ‘plutography.’ At the T&C offices, we call it our ‘crazy money’ stories. - New York Magazine

A Meditation On Originality And Plagiarism

Writers are indeed an incestuous little bunch eternally doomed to borrow, copy, steal, plagiarize, allude to, accidentally repeat, consciously imitate, alternately praise and denigrate each other’s work. Originality held aloft by its own purity in some Platonic realm . . . no, it doesn’t exist. - The Smart Set

Everyone Is Hating On The State Of Book Reviews. But What Are They Even For?

 If, in fact, book reviews are on the whole too positive, as some suggest, does this mean that the purpose of book reviewing is to sniff out what’s rotten? Or, if book reviews are too negative, does this mean that public-facing literary criticism’s purpose is to highlight what’s worth reading? - LA Review of Books

Behold The Modern Literary Festival — What An Uncreative Place!

The growth of British literary festivals over the past few decades has been an exponential development. It has also changed the idea of what people expect from authors. - The Critic

HuffPost Has Actually Become Profitable Since BuzzFeed Took It Over

The site had lost $20 million in 2020, the last full year before the takeover, but deep cuts and new investments led by BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti turned things around.  (Now, if only BuzzFeed can make itself profitable ...) - Axios

Has The Great Majority Of The World’s Greatest Literature Been Lost?

Researchers concluded that a humbling 90% of medieval manuscripts preserving chivalric and heroic narratives – those relating to King Arthur, for example – have gone. Of the stories themselves, about a third have been lost completely, meaning that no manuscript preserving them remains. - The Guardian

Space Opera Is Thriving (And Evolving)

The subgenre has evolved and thrived for a century with its key elements mostly intact: galactic encyclopedias of knowledge, interstellar politics, heroic journeys, and extraterrestrial encounters. Space opera remains the engine of the genre, one of its most prominent forms. - LA Review of Books

Straddling The Boundary Between Historical Fiction And Nonfiction Novel Is An Epistemological Feat

"Both (Benjamín Labatut's) When We Cease to Understand the World and (Danielle Dutton's) Margaret The First blur their relationship with historical fact, shifting between essayistic writing and vivid flights of imagination, ... (a) delicate balancing act. Both also, interestingly, explore questions of philosophical and scientific truth." - Literary Hub

Once Again, France’s Government Attempts To Eliminate English From French Tech Jargon

This time it's about video gaming. "While some expressions find obvious translations — 'pro-gamer' becomes 'joueur professionnel' — others seem a more strained, as 'streamer' is transformed into 'joueur-animateur en direct'." - Yahoo! (AFP)

Writing In “The ‘New Yorker’ Sort Of Voice” (And Knowing When To Leave It Behind)

"It is a voice of intelligent curiosity; it implies that the writer has synthesized a great deal of information; it confidently takes readers by the hand. ... It is an effective voice for a lot of long-form journalism, but it was not for the book I was trying to write." - Public Books

IKEA Is Doing What To Billy Bookcase?

It's one of the most popular piece of furniture in the world. And it's getting a redesign. (For safety, and the planet.) - Fast Company

Conde Nast Is No Longer A Magazine Company, Says Its CEO

The CEO who has made Condé Nast profitable again: "We have about 70 million people who read our magazines, but we have 300 something million that interact with our websites every month and 450 million that interact with us on social media." - Nieman Lab

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