The spectacle has been curiously entertaining. Publishing executives have had to initiate federal employees into a dialect of “backlists,” “advance copies,” and “BookTok influencers.” Onlookers have been treated to piquant performances. - The New Yorker
“The mood music seemed that ‘leisure’ activities had to be jettisoned due to the already felt increased cost of fuel/food, and there was a palpable anxiety about how much more expensive life may yet become and for how long the cost-of-living pressures would be felt.” - The Guardian
"Rushdie helped change how ... Europe and North America saw desis. He defied stereotypes and resisted all assumptions. He became, through no choice of his own, a hero for free expression and courage in the face of oppression. That role opened up possibilities" for other desis in the West. - The New Republic
The writer recounting this story lived to tell the tale but feels the need, even now, to remain anonymous. The bookseller's answer was, perhaps, a bit surprising as well. - The Guardian
Why? "Having a romance-only bookstore, says, has helped fans feel a little better about their passion for these stories. Readers tell Pool how grateful they are that Happily Ever After exists, since they’ve often suffered from the romance-novel stigma." - Toronto Star
"The translator , Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed to death at age 44 at Tsukuba University, northeast of Tokyo, where he had been teaching comparative Islamic culture for five years. No arrests were ever made, and the crime remains unsolved." - The New York Times
A lengthy court battle concludes with the author of The Last Unicorn wresting control of his finances and his work back from a manager. "The book consistently sells 15,000 to 20,000 a year — sales that would be a strong showing for a new book." - The New York Times
It's engagement, the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next - and it's not about becoming a better person, says author and critic Namwali Serpell. - The Guardian (UK)
"Writers represent the part of our culture that engages with humanity through ideas, whose passion is expressed through sentences and paragraphs and pages. It’s a realm we should not just preserve but defend." - The Atlantic
Students have formed banned book clubs like the one at Vandegrift High School, organized with statewide groups, and even overturned bans, like the students at Central York High School did. The students are also connecting with each other. NextCity
The Justice Department argues that the resulting merged company would control close to half of the best-seller market, continuing a longer history of publisher acquisitions, mergers and consolidation. This extraordinary shift in the balance of power in one of our nation’s most important industries has gone largely unremarked upon. - The New York Times
"Nepal's Kusunda language has no known origin and a number of quirks, like no words for 'yes' or 'no'. It also has only one fluent speaker left, something linguists are racing to change." - BBC
"(The American Library Association) says it is 'developing guidance' for libraries and library workers and working with other organizations to 'oppose any efforts to limit access to constitutionally protected information or limit privacy protections' for library users." - Publishers Weekly
Many words we consider, at best, crude were medieval common-or-garden words of description and were not considered obscene. To say ‘I’m going to piss’ was the equivalent of saying ‘I’m going to wee’ today and was politer than the new 16th-century vulgarity, ‘I’m going to take a leak’. - History Today
Most often the role of the poet-critic is neither to delineate nor disseminate, but rather to illuminate. In such manner the main subject of the poet-critic, versus that of the literary critic or reviewer, is poetry itself. - Salmagundi
