WORDS

There are The Farmer’s Almanac and The Old Farmer’s Almanac. Both are over 200 years old and both are annual publications known for their seasonal weather forecasts. The Farmer’s Almanac (founded in 1818) is the one closing; The Old Farmer’s Almanac (founded in 1792) “isn’t going anywhere.” - Nieman Lab

Communities are already feeling the impact: Some rural libraries in Florida and Mississippi, for example, have frozen interlibrary loan programs, sharply reducing the range of materials available to residents in more remote areas. - The New York Times

My husband and children knew what this meant. No one tried to compete with the Booker. Anytime after dinner, when there was a discussion about what movie to watch, no one asked me. Everybody knew what I would be doing. - The New York Times

“Szalay’s sixth work of fiction traces the life of one man, István, from his youth to midlife. The judges ‘had never read anything quite like it’, said panel chair Roddy Doyle, who won the prize in 1993. ‘It is, in many ways, a dark book, but it is a joy to read.’” - The Guardian

Academic critics read closely this year's Booker Prize finalists: Each novel has emotional temperature and structural ambition: domestic quietudes stretched into myth, migration histories turned intimate, masculinity stripped to bone, love sagas operating as cultural x-rays. A list that prizes atmosphere over spectacle. - The Conversation

We learn from stories. Our ancestors were raised on myths about their ancestors, tales about their saviours, emperors and lawgivers, and, eventually, novels about any number of times and places, most of them named.  - Equator

“For years we’ve been grappling with the collapse of the creative middle class due to corporate greed. … We have more content than ever, but fewer opportunities for art and artists to thrive.” - LitHub

“I want to know: I want to watch writers grow from book to book, to follow the way their interests shift and their style adapts as they do more and more work. I want to be aware of the through-lines—sometimes overt, sometimes understated.” - Reactor

“Each of these devices requires time, patience, and ideally, a solid internet connection. You need to predownload language pairs to ensure offline capability. You have to have the wherewithal to gesture to a conversation partner what the device is.” - The Verge (Archive Today)

“Publishers have faced a difficult dilemma: stop offering books that the Kremlin dislikes, clandestinely cut the risky parts or openly redact them to show readers that something was censored. … ‘Right now we’re all playing Minesweeper, (said one literary critic,) when you don’t understand what is forbidden and what is not.’” - The New York Times

“’Vibe coding,’ an emerging software development that turns natural language into computer code using artificial intelligence, … was coined ... to describe how artificial intelligence can enable someone to create a new app while being able to ‘forget that the code even exists’.” - The Guardian

2024’s total figure of 836,199 was its biggest volume performance since 2009 and, so far in 2025, we have seen 628,431 books pass through the tills, an increase of 6.7% against the first 42 weeks of last year. - The Bookseller

The librarian is a seeker and keeper of truth, and that makes her a dangerous figure in the eyes of those who fear the fullest, most comprehensive, and most uncomfortable truths emerging. - LitHub

“How to End a Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner charts the Australian writer's life from her early career in bohemian Melbourne to raising her daughter in the 1970s and her disintegrating marriage in the 1990s.” The jury’s vote was unanimous, with one judge calling it “a remarkable, addictive book.” - BBC (Yahoo!)

“Laurent Mauvignier Tuesday won France's top literary award, the Goncourt, for his family saga spanning the 20th century and recounting the story of his grandmother accused of collaborating during World War II. Just one round of voting sufficed for the jury to select La Maison Vide.” - AFP (Yahoo!)