The CEO of Simon & Schuster has some thoughts about what will be going on a decade from now: "I fearlessly predict that the average book will be shorter.” - Boston Globe (Archive Today)
Quiara Alegria Hudes: "I think there is more space for our different communities in literature than in theater. It costs less, and you can get books for free at the library, that makes it easier.” - El País English
“You can’t speed-read a poem,” he explains. “You have to read it, hear the sounds, the rhythms, reread it, not be in a hurry. Slowing down helps us realize that for our speed, we sacrifice things.” - Christian Science Monitor
A library director in Wyoming who was fired two years ago because she refused to remove books with sexual content and L.G.B.T.Q. themes from a library’s children and young adult sections was awarded $700,000 in a settlement on Wednesday. - The New York Times
So: a victory for high literature, for inevitability, for oppositional culture, for men. But for the obsessives who have been attending to the saga of the Nobel Prize in literature over the past decade, it’s also something of a bummer. - The New Republic
A report by charity Inclusive Books for Children found that of the 2,721 books surveyed, only 51 featured a Black main character, down by 21.5% since 2023. - The Guardian
“Terri Lesley was fired as the library system director in northeastern Wyoming’s Campbell County in 2023, two years into the dispute … over books with sexual content and LGBTQ+ themes that some people complained were inappropriate for youngsters and sought their removal from youth shelves … at the library in Gillette.” - AP
“Often described as postmodern, Krasznahorkai is known for his long, winding sentences, dystopian and melancholic themes, and the kind of relentless intensity that has led critics to compare him to Gogol, Melville and Kafka. Satantango, was famously adapted into a seven-hour film by director Béla Tarr.” - The Guardian
The Warsaw book heist was not an isolated incident but one of the final stops on an unprecedented grand tour of bibliophilic crime, which snaked its way from north-east to south-west Europe between spring 2022 and winter 2023. - The Guardian
Baker & Taylor let go about 520 employees yesterday and plans to wind down the business by January. Employees who were laid off had their severance plans canceled as well. B&T had undergone some layoffs earlier this year, but recently had as many as 1,500 full-time and part-time employees. - Publishers Weekly
“The Poems of Seamus Heaney will feature his 12 collections interspersed with poems published in magazines, journals and newspapers, plus 25 poems selected from Heaney’s large number of unpublished works.” - The Guardian
As of November 3, Lee Enterprises is ceasing seven-day-a-week print editions at all of its papers that hadn’t already done so. Those titles include the St. Louis-Post Dispatch, Omaha World-Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, Buffalo News, Quad City Times (Iowa/Illinois) and Richmond Times-Dispatch. - MediaPost
Fiction by Rabih Alameddine, Megha Majumdar and Karen Russell and a memoir of family tragedy by Yiyun Li are among … five nominees in each of five competitive categories. ... Winners, each of whom receive $10,000, will be revealed during a Nov. 19 dinner gala in downtown Manhattan.” - AP
