"Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks announced that they have joined the initial plaintiffs, which included PRH, the Iowa State Education Association, four renowned authors (Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, Malinda Lo, and Jodi Picoult), and a group of teachers and students." - Publishers Weekly
The generative-AI boom, despite promises to bridge languages and cultures, may only further entrench the dominance of English in life on and off the web. - The Atlantic
“The goal of Smut, says Scollard, is to 'champion work that might find it difficult to get published elsewhere – maybe a bit risqué or provocative. But the main basis is that we want to work with queer artists.'" - Irish Times
Library workers aren’t happy. "The City is denying Seattleites 1,500 hours of learning, checking out books, applying for jobs, talking with neighbors, sheltering from bad weather, and, though librarians should not be de facto social workers, perhaps overdose prevention, workers said." - The Stranger (Seattle)
Emi Mahmoud has been trying to bring Sudan to life for non-Sudanese people for years. But now, the poet’s urgency has increased due to the country's last year of intense civil war. - NPR
"What a remarkable change it would be if corporations would allow their employees to do the best job they can with each book that the company has chosen to buy, rather than allowing them to flail.” - LitHub
“I confess, I had sometimes imagined my assassin rising up in some public forum or other, and coming for me in just this way. So my first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing towards me was, ‘So it’s you. Here you are.’” - The Guardian
"During the years leading up to his death in a Russian prison, the Russian opposition leader was writing a memoir about his life and work as a pro-democracy activist. Titled Patriot, the memoir will be published in the United States by Knopf on Oct. 22." - The New York Times
According to the recordings, Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of generative AI, told executives that the company had used almost every book, poem and essay written in English available on the internet to train models, so was looking for new sources of training material. - The Guardian
Since these digital services first promised to boil down a title, usually a nonfiction work, a decade ago, the marketplace has become crowded. So much so that authors and publishers are concerned about the damage to sales, as well as to the habit of concentrated reading. - The Guardian
In the foreword to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a possible second Donald Trump administration, it says “people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.” - AP
"The new double-sided Scrabble board will still feature the original game. ... But the new game on the flip side will include helper cards, use a simpler scoring system and be quicker to play. The new board, Scrabble Together, will also allow people to compete in teams." - BBC
The San Andrés Tetepilco codices — three late 16th-early 17th century manuscripts, one of which recounts the history of the Aztec capital (on the site of present-day Mexico City) from 1300 to 1611 — had been in private hands for generations before word reached the National Institute of Anthropology and History. - Artnet
By comparison, the number of book titles challenged annually from 2000 to 2020 was fairly stable and never exceeded 400 targets in a given year. - The Wall Street Journal
