"Florida’s statute ... requires districts to set up a process for a parent or resident of the county to contest school and classroom library materials that they believe contain pornographic or sexual content. The country’s largest publishing houses say Florida has unleashed a wave of censorship." - The Wall Street Journal (MSN)
Even the driest academic monograph or most threadbare opinion piece usually begins with some act of storytelling, whether we hear how a previous generation of scholars has mishandled the question at hand, or are treated to a columnist’s anecdote about what his taxi driver told him. - American Affairs
"The scheme, Bookloop by Bookshop.org, allows customers to trade books they own for credit to use on the website. Readers can register books through the online valuation system and then either leave them at a DPD drop-off point or have them picked up from home." - The Guardian
Since March 2023, more than 1,000 teams have entered this competition. In October 2023, the first letters and lines of Greek text were detected, and in February 2024, the first winners of the prize money. Their AI model spectacularly revealed parts of 15 columns from the innermost part of one of the scrolls. - The Conversation
Poetry has drastically changed after World War Ⅱ; it’s parted from art—including poems, waka, haiku, and novels written until around the end of the War—that adheres to a certain purposive style and “shape.” - Words Without Borders
Not only did he take characters and stories from all walks of 14th-century English life, he borrowed phrases from Latin, French, and Italian; took his approach to writing in vernacular from Dante; and swiped narratives from Ovid and Bocaccio. He even stole the Chaucerian stanza itself: it's actually Machaut's rime royal. - Poetry Foundation
Electors in Albany, Western Australia (about 4½ hours south of Perth) voted to remove two sex education titles, one aimed at teens, from public library shelves in what the local LGBTIQA+ advocacy group called a "moral panic" and an attempt to conflate sexual minorities with child grooming. - ABC (Australia)
"Our research … shows that simple headlines significantly increase article engagement and clicks compared with headlines that use complex language. … But importantly, we found that those who actually write headlines — journalists themselves — did not." - Nieman Lab
Over the past two years, poets have emerged as some of the nation’s most popular voices, their verse capturing the raw emotions of the conflict and resonating deeply with a war-weary population. Sales of poetry books have soared. - The New York Times
"I will always prefer a book I can hold in my hand, the kind that smells of paper and glue, the kind whose unfolding I control, no button or touchscreen involved, by flipping backward and forward with pages ruffling between my fingers. The physicality of it pleases me." - The New York Times
“Under the name of his alter ego, MC Grammar, Mitchell has become a wildly popular performer whose rhymes have made reading and grammar all the rage among young people across Britain.” - The New York Times
Wait, don’t lick that bright green cover - which probably contains arsenic. “Since the project launched five years ago, Tedone's team has cataloged more than 300 books containing the pigment, a figure that's likely just a drop in the ink pot.” - NPR
“Amanda Jones is a Louisiana middle-school librarian who sleeps with a shotgun under her bed and carries a pistol when she travels the back roads” thanks to right-wing attacks on books - and now her. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
She was labeled a “sicko, pig, trash,” she writes in the memoir. "The sense of betrayal was overwhelming." One message was particularly alarming: “Continue with your LGBT agenda on our children cause we gunna put in the dirt very soon ... You can’t hide." - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
In the 20th century, the word lost its hint of the macabre as its meaning became something quieter. “Weird” now means peculiar — perhaps passingly so, but against what one would expect. - The New York Times
