ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

The Twitter Account That Collects Awkward Writing

The account tracks the ways that writers strive to express the same thing differently, with examples taken mostly from newspapers and magazines around the world. - The New Yorker

What It Takes To Be A Mid-Size Publisher

"The midsize publishing community has greatly contracted and, as I think about the businesses that still make up this community, I am struck by the fact that they all share two important attributes." - Publishers Weekly

“Recreational Puritanism”: A Warning To Right-Wing Book Banners About Their Battle Against The Woke Left

John McWhorter: "They miss that their book bans are just as tinny, just as local to petty concerns of our moment and just as, well, unjust. And by revving up its own cancel culture, the anti-woke right is providing the woke left with bulletin-board material." - The New York Times

What Makes The Difference Between A Dialect And A Language? Depends On Who’s Answering The Question

For governments, the quip that "a language is a dialect with an army and navy" is more-or-less true — so Czech and Slovak, Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian are different languages. For linguists, dialects are mutually intelligible and languages are not. So what of Cantonese — or Ukrainian? - The Conversation

Culture-War Censorship Bleeds From School Libraries Into Public Libraries

"Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries' governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures." - MSN (The Washington Post)

Great Bookstores: The 130-Year-Old Pasadena Icon

By 1915, Vroman’s could count traveling dignitaries, engineers, scientists, men of finance and New York book editors as customers. Anticipating their requests, the store carried more than 30,000 titles of fiction and nonfiction and boasted the “largest selection of Bibles in Southern California.” - Los Angeles Times

Vladimir Sorokin Says Russian Writers Must Fight Back Against Totalitarianism

Sorokin: "A Russian writer has two options: Either you are afraid, or you write. ... I write." - The New York Times

A Story About The Banning Of The Book Persepolis Has Led To Another Graphic Novel About The Ban

Chicago Public Schools quietly banned and removed the famous graphic novel in 2013. In 2023, a graphic novel will be published that "follows a group of Chicago high school students who fight back against the attempts at censorship in their own school." - Book Riot

Brooklyn Public Library Fights Back Against The Wave Of School Book Bannings

Under a program called Books UnBanned, anyone in the US aged 13 to 21 may request a free eCard from the BPL, gaining access to hundreds of thousands of ebooks and audiobooks. The library has even selected a list of the most banned books to make readily available. - Book Riot

Los Angeles’ Role In American Literature

Until the middle of the century, its most visible work was crafted by outsiders from the East or Europe, bewildered by what they perceived as the otherness of Southern California, its sun and light, its palm trees. That all began to shift in the 1960s with the emergence of the Watts Writers Workshop. - Los Angeles Times

Indie Bookstores Used To Hate Barnes & Noble. Now They’re Rooting For It.

So's the entire publishing industry. "(The chain's) unique role in the book ecosystem, where it helps readers discover new titles and publishers stay invested in physical stores, makes it an essential anchor in a world upended by online sales and a much larger player: Amazon." - The New York Times

Should Readers Be Allowed To Return E-Books Even After They’ve Read Them?

This practise has been brought to light, in part thanks to a TikTok trend whereby some readers have been posting videos about doing just that, even sharing tips on how to do so. Amazon allows readers to return ebooks up to 14 days after purchase, even if the whole book has been read. - Melville House

700-Year-Old Passover Manuscript At Center of Lawsuit Against Israel Museum Over Nazi Looting

The so-called Birds' Head Haggadah (ca. 1300) belonged to German parliament member Ludwig Marum, one of the earliest Jews to die in the Holocaust. His grandchildren (three of them survivors themselves) are suing the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the book has been since 1946, for restitution. - The Art Newspaper

Does The Spanish Language Explain The “Hispanic Paradox” In Health Outcomes?

The "paradox" is that Hispanics in the US tend to have less heart disease and longer lifespans than non-Hispanic whites despite having higher risk factors. One researcher suggests that particular features of the Spanish language such as the diminutive suffix are a key element of the phenomenon. - The Conversation

Nature Writing Should Be As Unsentimental As Nature Is

"Every writer on nature comes to their own accommodation with the hard facts of wild life. We needn't all look at them too closely, or for too long – but, if we don't look at them at all, I'm not sure what our writing is for." - Aeon

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