Of course, it's a win after a long fight. "Amazon has done the right thing for once! In this case, the right thing is closing a loophole revealed by a TikTok about 'reading hacks.'" - LitHub
"Booksellers are lucky, because we get to sell whatever we want to sell. So we can sell the banned books, but what they're doing to schools and libraries, for that generation coming up ... is not the right way to go." - NPR
"Scary books give children the tools to deal with fear off the page. ... Banning books shuts that gateway to the good and the bad, the funny and the terrifying, and the knowledge that difficult paths may lead to happy endings." - The Atlantic
"A staggering 82 to 97 percent of book challenges go unreported on. That means these books, the overwhelming majority, don't even make it beyond the school-board minutes and into the local paper. And this question of how much attention a book gets ... is a crucial factor." - MSN (The Atlantic)
Books carry knowledge, and knowledge is power, which makes books a threat to authorities – governments and self-appointed leaders alike – who want to have a monopoly on knowledge and to control what their citizens think. And the most efficient way to exert this power over books is to ban them. - BBC
It’s ironic. Texting was meant to make communication easier, but it can be much harder to discern someone’s tone over text, especially with inflections as subtle as sarcasm. - Prospect
"Ordering a coffee in a foreign country or translating lyrics can only do so much harm, but think about emergency situations involving firefighters, police, border patrol, or immigration. And without proper regulation and clear guidelines, it could get worse." - Slate
For instance, was there any connection between Gutenberg's first printing of the Bible in 1455 and the first known document ever printed, 77 years earlier in Korea? That's what a team of researchers assembled by UNESCO's International Center for Documentary Heritage is investigating. - Atlas Obscura
Remember, it's not only the right that sometimes wants to eliminate certain books from the curriculum. (Think of Huckleberry Finn, frequently condemned for its copious, period-accurate use of the n-word.) Deborah Appleman suggests approaches to keeping a text in the classroom while mitigating potential damage or controversy. - Literary Hub
"After spending the past few years teasing its literary ambitions and acquiring the audiobook platform Findaway for $119 million, Spotify has formally launched its audiobooks business as an à la carte model that will allow users to purchase and download individual audiobooks." - The Hollywood Reporter
“This is a concerted, organized, well-resourced push at censorship,” said Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of PEN America. The effort, she said, “is ideologically motivated and politically expedient, and it needs to be understood as such in order to be confronted and addressed properly.” - The New York Times
So does every other country's belief in its war history, of course. "Versions told by autocrats and family men trample diary entries and letters. Stories, or rather silences, around the Siege have haunted Leningrad-native Barskova her entire life." - LitHub
Gayl Jones and Jamil Jan Kochai are the only established names on a list that includes two filmmakers and several books of short stories - and that leaves off some expected nominees like Yiyun Li, Lydia Millet, and Andrew Sean Greer. - Washington Post (AP)
"I’m sometimes asked about fiction I wrote 50 years ago and it’s cheering to know that for readers there is no time dimension. Books live in a form of the perpetual present." - The Guardian (UK)
"Once maligned as lowbrow, the genre has gained popularity over the past two decades" - perhaps because of social media and our hyper-aware lives. - The Atlantic
