“Style isn’t something you apply later,” Amis said in 2021, explaining why he couldn’t abide JM Coetzee. “It’s embedded in your perception, and writers without that freshness of voice make no appeal to me. What is one in quest of with such a writer? Their views? Their theories?” - New Statesman
Even in an age when people frequently wrote by hand, messy and at times illegible handwriting was still a common problem. They even had a word for it: cacography, calligraphy’s evil twin. - The Conversation
If you loved Appropriate? Well, it’s got to be Mat Johnson’s Loving Day. You’re an Outsiders fan? How about you take a look at Justin Torres’s incredible We the Animals. (These are eerily accurate.) - LitHub
Elizabeth Horan would really like us to know the name - and work - of Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, "the first and only great Latin American writer of the 20th century to declare her peasant origins and to describe herself as mestiza.” - El País
Now the book club - for Black, Indigenous, and other women of color - has more than 1300 members, and it’s about way more than books. - Oregon ArtsWatch
That’s right: Parents who love Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR for those in the know) series haven’t learn from the Game of Throne baby names brouhaha. Now it’s all Rhys and Cassian and Feyre, and etc. - CBC
"The Prison Mirror (is) made by and for the people held at the Minnesota Correctional Facility – Stillwater. … Publications like this aren’t common, but in an era where many journalism outlets in the free world are struggling to thrive amid scores of layoffs, journalism behind bars is actually growing." - NPR
"The (justices) in a unanimous decision said (state) superintendent Ryan Walters and the Department of Education overstepped their authority in trying to force Edmond schools to ban two novels. Local school boards retain the discretion to decide which books are in a school’s library based on their community’s standards." - Oklahoma Watch
The journals that were withdrawn were all owned by Hindawi, a company Wiley bought in January 2021, that was later discovered to have a paper mill problem at some titles. - Chemistry World
"Over 30,000 field experiments with The Washington Post and Upworthy showed that readers prefer simpler headlines (e.g., more common words and more readable writing) over more complex ones. A follow-up experiment showed that (they) paid more attention to, and processed more deeply, the simpler headlines compared to the complex headlines." - Science Advances
According to independent events planners, publicists and marketers, more and more authors are seeking out their services to augment the efforts of their publishers’ in-house staff. - The Guardian
In a 3-2 vote, the Indian River County School Board in Vero Beach overruled its own book-review committee to remove "Ban This Book" by Alan Gratz. One member described the children's novel as "teaching rebellion of school board authority"; another called it "just a liberal Marxist propaganda piece." - Tallahassee Democrat
A recent survey about the reading habits of Canadians conducted by BookNet Canada, which collects and analyzes data about the Canadian book industry, found that a majority of book readers and audiobook listeners in Canada acquired their books for free in 2023. - Publishers Weekly
