"Shelley's greatest gift was in the deftness with which he interwove the poetical and the political. Poetry had, for Shelley, of necessity to appropriate a political dimension. And politics required a poetical imagination. That was why ... 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world'." - The Observer (UK)
Ada Limón "assumes the role with two primary intentions: to use poetry to help people reclaim their humanity and to repair their relationship with the natural world. ... Instead of seeing nature as separate from humanity, she implores us to remember that 'we are nature too.'" - MSN (The Washington Post)
Many of them opened during the pandemic shutdown, such as The Salt Eaters Bookshop in L.A. County and Socialight Society in Lansing, Mich., oriented toward Black women; Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, Pa., a "queer, feminist indie bookstore"; and Yu and Me Books in Manhattan's Chinatown. - The New York Times
Amy Duncan was editor and publisher, and her husband, Mark Davitt, managing editor, of The Record-Tribune in Indianola, Iowa, and when they heard that Gannett wanted to sell some of its smaller titles, they leapt at the chance. They're publishing in hard copy weekly and operating online daily. - NPR
"Bookstores, like wines, have different notes, different flavors, each one distinct. There are the musty, quirky ones with haphazard piles and dusty rows, usually with both used and new books. There are the small indie stores, quaint, cozy and scrappy." - The New York Times
In Joan Didion's essay about writing to find out what one thinks, she also wrote, "'The arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement.' This is a much stranger reason to write than to clarify an argument." - The Paris Review
Honestly, readers love them. "There’s something a little sexy about a well-executed negative review. ... A great pan does not just point out what’s missing from a book. It can fill those gaps with exhilarating, new conversations." - The Atlantic
Indie bookstores are positively booming - and they're more diverse than ever. This is a shock (a wonderful shock), considering that in the early days of the pandemic, "hundreds of small booksellers around the United States seemed doomed." - The New York Times
Many institutions have moved, or are on the verge of moving, significant portions of their collections off-site. Some are embarking on large-scale book de-accessioning projects, a process by which books are removed permanently from a collection. - The Walrus
The 1937 translation was commissioned two years previously by wealthy American accounting executive Carl Tilden Keller, who already had versions of Cervantes's novel in Icelandic, Japanese, and Mongolian. The translators were two Kashmiri pandits who knew no Spanish and worked from an 18th-century English version. - The Guardian
Nearly a century old, it’s still avidly read and discussed in MFA circles, thanks to its author’s meticulous dissection of the devices of fiction, likely more valuable than any of the most recent craft books on the shelves. - LA Review of Books
"Accustomed to being seen as dedicated public servants in their communities, (they) have found themselves … labeled pedophiles on social media, called out by local politicians and reported to law enforcement officials." - The New York Times
