According to the recordings, Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of generative AI, told executives that the company had used almost every book, poem and essay written in English available on the internet to train models, so was looking for new sources of training material. - The Guardian
Since these digital services first promised to boil down a title, usually a nonfiction work, a decade ago, the marketplace has become crowded. So much so that authors and publishers are concerned about the damage to sales, as well as to the habit of concentrated reading. - The Guardian
In the foreword to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a possible second Donald Trump administration, it says “people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.” - AP
"The new double-sided Scrabble board will still feature the original game. ... But the new game on the flip side will include helper cards, use a simpler scoring system and be quicker to play. The new board, Scrabble Together, will also allow people to compete in teams." - BBC
The San Andrés Tetepilco codices — three late 16th-early 17th century manuscripts, one of which recounts the history of the Aztec capital (on the site of present-day Mexico City) from 1300 to 1611 — had been in private hands for generations before word reached the National Institute of Anthropology and History. - Artnet
By comparison, the number of book titles challenged annually from 2000 to 2020 was fairly stable and never exceeded 400 targets in a given year. - The Wall Street Journal
American Library Association President Emily Drabinski: "Everywhere I go, the story is the same: library workers are afraid. They have a lot of anxiety. Even in places where they’re not seeing censorship in their own community, the threat of it is weighing heavily on library workers." - HuffPost
"Reader and writer, therapist and client, come together to conjure something in a mysterious symbiosis that will help make sense of the experience of being alive. We can uncover stories we have told about ourselves that we didn’t even know were there." - LitHub
Newly translated, her books are winning attention. Says writer Raoul de Jong, "There was a whole system in place to keep voices like hers silent. … The recognition, to me, is not only for Astrid, but also for all these writers who are no longer here.” - The New York Times
Myriam J.A. Chancy: "When history is a nightmare, all one can do is circumvent it, write another version, a fiction. This is what literature is for: rewriting, revising." - LitHub
The complexity and melancholy of Cloud Atlas have inspired "cosplay, reader art, fan fiction and scholarship … in great quantity. It is a response that one might expect to a bestselling fantasy series, a video game, or the unveiling of a Taylor Swift album; rarely a literary novel." - The Guardian (UK)
The author of Erasure, adapted as American Fiction and nominated for several Oscars, and the new James, says a bad review "might be fun? That’s gonna be kind of crazy, to be upset about a bad review. Like, what else can you expect in the world?” - The Guardian (UK)
“Living in a cell the size of a parking space without a television, tablet, phone, or air-conditioning and an only temperamental radio signal, a book is more than entertainment and much needed distraction. It is a rare moment when I’m not reminded where I am." - LitHub
