"Ernest Moret, a French foreign rights manager with Editions La Fabrique was stopped as he attempted to enter the UK at St. Pancras train station under the pretense that he may have 'engaged in terrorist acts.' The acts? Protesting efforts by the French government to raise the retirement age." - Literary Hub
"Going forward, BuzzFeed will concentrate its news efforts in a single profitable news organization — HuffPost, which it acquired from Verizon in 2020, per (CEO Jonah) Peretti's memo. The company's flagship BuzzFeed.com site will remain in place." - Variety
Public libraries—once as popular with libertarian autodidacts as leftists—have become targets of the Republican Party. Local-library systems, and local librarians, are being vilified nationwide as peddlers of Marxism and child pornography. - The New Yorker
"The American Prison Writing Archive … plans to increase the number of (its) digitized first-person accounts to more than 10,000, start a book series, launch exhibitions and create a kind of digital umbrella linking to kindred open-access efforts like the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing program." - The New York Times
"Research (has) found that a third of librarians had been asked by members of the public to censor or remove books, indicating that such incidences 'had increased significantly in recent years'. … The most targeted books involve empire, race and LGBTQ+ themes." - The Guardian
"We value small businesses, yet we give too much of our business to the large and the powerful," says the award-winning author, "and often, increasingly, we have hardly any choice. … (I don't) believe corporations should have as much control over our lives as they do." - The Guardian
The movement, under the banner of “the science of reading,” is targeting the education establishment: school districts, literacy gurus, publishers and colleges of education, which critics say have failed to embrace the cognitive science of how children learn to read. - The New York Times
"Trade body the Publishers Association found that sales were up 4% from 2021. In 2022, 669 million physical books were sold in the UK, the highest overall level ever recorded, … with a total income of £6.9 billion." - The Guardian
"The class of 2023 are the children of “terror and the war on terror,' of credit crunch and austerity, too young to have known 'the brief period of hope' after the cold war – a funny way of saying they’re not always very funny." - The Guardian (UK)
Agents and publishers might quail, but "a good story conveys a sense of more going on in the background, more to be discovered. We choose to return to them because something in them—honesty, clearsighted wisdom, a sense of humor, surprising turns of phrase, depth of character—lingers, expands." - LitHub
County commissioners agreed to keep the library open and restore some banned books, but the threat isn't over. A librarian who resigned explains not only how many horrible phone calls she received, but how important the library is for the community. - NPR
For one thing, it feels shockingly contemporary - and for another, "From its opening line, The Tale of Genji signals its author’s focus on how women steer the fate of the hero." - The New York Times
Well, not accidentally, but not on purpose. Its list of the 100 Most Influential People is "surprisingly literary! I mean, it’s not that literary, but considering that the TIME editors typically limit themselves to a single novelist among the 100, books seem to be coming up in the world." - LitHub
"Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham announced that the county's library system will stay open. … Commissioners considered whether or not they would shut down their library system rather than complying with a federal judge's order that they must return 17 banned books to the library shelves." - Texas Public Radio
