The professor is Justin McDaniel, chair of the religious studies department at Penn. The class meets once a week for seven-to-eight hours, reading one book cover-to-cover in complete silence, then discuss it. No phones, of course. - New York Magazine
My entire collection of something like 4,000 volumes, acquired one by one over all those decades, had turned to smoke and ash in the Palisades Fire. The question before me was not just about this particular book, but about whether it made sense, in my late 70s, to begin collecting all over again. - The Atlantic
The estate of the author of Slaughterhouse-Five (one of the banned books) joins three (living) novelists and two anonymous high school students as plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU of Utah, in a complaint challenging the state’s “sensitive material review” law. - Publishers Weekly
The company faced several challenges in recent years, including a data breach in 2022 – after the company was acquired by a private investment group in 2021 – that put it in what independent library consultant Marshall Breeding called "a weak financial position." - NPR
Not exactly, no, but science journalist Michael Greshko may have taken a big step toward that goal. No one had yet figured out a workable approach to even attempt reading the famously indecipherable 15th-century codex, but Greshko has demonstrated that a medieval-style cipher using cards and dice is plausible. - Live Science
How, in 1894, just when literary interest in Sappho was reviving, Belgian-French author Pierre Louÿs (yes, he was a friend of Oscar’s) invented an ancient Greek poetess called Bilitis, composed erotic poetry he attributed to her (he claimed only to have translated it), and created a classic of lesbian literature. - Aeon
“Many teachers are secret revolutionaries and still assign whole books,” said Heather McGuire, a survey respondent who teaches English in New Mexico. I cheer these renegades because I can’t imagine my life – or bringing up my own children – without reading books in print. - The Guardian
According to a YouGov poll released at year’s end, American reading habits stay in the toilet. Four in ten Americans didn’t read a single book during our last spin around the sun. And of the 60% who did venture to a library, most were frugal. - LitHub
To begin the new year at public schools across the state, Utah officials banned three more books. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. - BookRiot
It was not long before people began poking holes in Joan Lowell’s story. But the book didn’t sink—it was a great success, in part for reasons new to her era and familiar to ours. - The New Yorker
If boomers and Gen X are puzzled by the fact that many youngsters are not required to endure the same painstaking labor of mastering cursive that they were, they might be even more surprised — perhaps, even delighted — to hear that some are learning the craft entirely for fun. - Washington Post
The round-up includes books translated from French, Danish, Bulgarian, and Japanese, but the critic says, “for my money, contemporary Chinese writing is the most interesting literature being produced today.” - Irish Times (Archive Today)
