"The Codex Sassoon, a leather-bound, handwritten (10th-century) parchment volume containing a nearly complete Hebrew Bible, was purchased … on behalf of the American Friends of ANU and donated to ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv." - AP
"Jen Cousins and Stephana Ferrell track school board votes and the fates of books across Florida's 67 districts. They file public records requests, appear before the Legislature, enlist volunteers and try to find wins in a state firmly in the hands of a conservative Republican Party." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
"Books about the Tiananmen Square massacre, Hong Kong protest movements, and other subjects deemed politically sensitive by Beijing have been removed from the former British colony's public libraries in the lead-up to the 34th anniversary of the killings." - The Guardian
Blurb, then, is a twentieth-century euphemism for a particular kind of advertisement, one that uses evaluation as a figleaf for a sales pitch. In the twenty-first century book world, the blurbs are inescapable. - Sydney Review of Books
"Maybe you recognize it from the Shake Shack nameplate. ... Even if you think you've never seen it before, if you step outside, you might very well see this typeface going up on homes in your neighborhood. And it could be a sign that rents are going up." - The Guardian
As per the bill, the $62 million of funding that goes to the state’s libraries will only be eligible for said funding if they “adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights” or “develop a written statement prohibiting the practice of banning books or other materials within the library or library system.“ - BookRiot
At least on the face of it, the mainstream of US nonfiction is stately, thorough, chronological and substantial; whereas British nonfiction is slant, whimsical, allusive and personal. Is that a temperamental or cultural difference? Up to a point, perhaps, yes. But there’s something else at work too. - LitHub
Kuang, author of bestseller Babel, says her new novel came to her almost fully formed. "Publishing was going through what seems like all these watershed moments, having conversations about change and diversity and caring about marginalized writers, et cetera, and I was feeling a bit cynical." - Los Angeles Times
The protagonists are cut from the same cookie cutter mold. "Readers, let us all take a moment to silently contemplate her self-sacrifice, the definitive characteristic of exemplary single motherhood." - LitHub
Shakespeare was Shakespeare. The rest is idiocy. "While to most of us, a poem explicitly mentioning Shakespeare and crediting him with writing 'The Rape of Lucrece' would bolster the case for Shakespeare’s authorship, to truthers the poem is suspect." - Slate
That is, the Eurovision Book Contest. "In March, the literary festival asked the public to submit their favourite fiction from any of the 37 countries that take part in the music competition each year." - The Guardian (UK)
Irby "received hate mail from fans who believed had somehow blasphemed their beloved Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda. Her response ... is an entire chapter devoted to her ideas about changing up episodes of the original series, like having Aidan murder Mr. Big." - The New York Times
There are parts of the jail system that we no longer visit, because we don’t feel safe there. Other parts have lost library access because we don’t have enough staff. - The New Yorker
