ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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How Did A Novel About Game Development Become A Multi-Year Bestseller?

Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, isn't sure. And it's a bit weird for her. "Even though is not her first book, or even her first to be a best seller, many readers are coming to her work for the first time." - The New York Times

When Langston Hughes Wrote A Children’s Book

In 1936, Hughes and artist Elmer W. Brown put together and shopped around The Sweet and Sour Animal Book. No publisher acquired the book, but the original verses and pictures have been reunited for a museum show in Cleveland. - The New York Times

Rare Books Damaged In Italy’s Recent Floods Are Being Salvaged By Flash-Freezing Them

"Volunteers have been transporting the books and other precious documents, which became submerged in water and mud in flooded libraries in the worst-affected areas, to Cesena, where the items will be placed on shelves in temperatures of -25C (-13F) in industrial-size freezers provided by (frozen-food company) Orogel." - The Guardian

This Publisher Is Building A Business On Old Out-Of-Print Books

"A company called Open Road Integrated Media is trying to (give) a second life to older books. It does that by using machine learning to make those titles more visible online and ... by republishing books that were largely forgotten or had fallen out of print." - The New York Times

Why The US Needs Its Own Bookfair

The U.S. is the biggest English-language publishing market it the world, yet it’s one of the few large countries without an industrywide conference. - Publishers Weekly

To This They’ve Come: Florida School Forbids Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Poem To Grade-School Students

"A parent of a student at Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes objected to the poem, for which they erroneously listed Oprah Winfrey as the author/publisher. … It 'is not educational and have (sic) indirectly hate messages,' the complaint said, adding that the poem would 'cause confusion and indoctrinate students.'" - CNN

International Booker Prize 2023 Goes To Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel for “Time Shelter”

"(The novel) imagines the 'first clinic of the past,' in which Alzheimer's patients can visit different time periods of their lives on different floors." As The Guardian's reviewer put it, "this funny yet frightening Bulgarian novel explores the weaponisation of nostalgia." - NPR

Hi! We’d Love To Publish Your Book. But Could You Take Out Any Reference To Racism?

In what Maggie Tokuda-Hall described as a “Faustian bargain,” Scholastic made the offer contingent on removing mentions of the Japanese American incarceration that tied that history to a broader past during this “politically sensitive” moment. They also asked her to remove the word “racism.” - Seattle Times

The 100 Greatest Children’s Books of All Times (A BBC Culture Poll)

"BBC Culture polled 177 books experts from 56 countries in order to find the greatest children's books ever. From Where the Wild Things Are to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, here's the top 100." - BBC

Yup — Using Big Words Doesn’t Make You Sound Smarter

“Complexity neither disguised the shortcomings of poor essays, nor enhanced the appeal of high-quality essays.” In other words, George Orwell got it right: “Never use a long word where a short one will do.” - Big Think

Georgia School District’s Book Bans May Violate Civil Rights Laws, Officials Warn

"The U.S. Department of Education has found that a suburban Atlanta school district's decision to remove some books from its libraries may have created a hostile environment that violated federal laws against race and sex discrimination." - AP

In Several US State: Lend A Book, Go To Prison

Some of the laws impose severe penalties on librarians, who until now were exempted in almost every state from prosecution over obscene material — a carve-out meant to permit accurate lessons in topics such as sex education. - Washington Post

Social Media And Emojis Are Fueling The Return Of An Ancient Filipino Writing System

"One glance at Filipino social media and you will find a recurrent set of waves, twists and inverted heart shapes. They’re more than just symbols — they’re part of the 17-character writing system called Baybayin, which is making a comeback after hundreds of years." - NBC News

What It Feels Like To Write A Book In A Language Your Parents Can Never Read

"Wanting to write ... made me unintelligible to my mother. I couldn’t explain how I would survive on a career in words, and she couldn’t fathom why I would squander the chance at prosperity my parents had contorted to give me." - The Atlantic

How Fear And Opportunism Is Fueling Book Bans

What I find most fascinating about the lawsuit, though, is the glimpse it offers into how national and state-level political dynamics empower the most fanatical members of a community to impose their will on everyone else. - The New York Times

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