These novels, aimed at young men who will soon be targets of recruitment drives, often feature hyper-nationalist, crudely-drawn “accidental travel” plots, wherein the hero is transported to pivotal moments in Russia’s past, using 21st-century knowledge to alter history in Russia’s favor, wreaking revenge against foreigners who try to destroy the Motherland. - The Guardian
“The problem AI (has is) that it (can’t) make up its own jokes, the writer said. ‘It has no sense of humour – you don’t want to hear a joke told by ChatGPT. If there’s a moment when there’s a funny book written by ChatGPT I think we’re screwed.’” - The Guardian
“Disney Publishing’s most recent pivot came in 2020, when it sold 1,110 children’s titles to Hachette and decided to focus on acquiring global content that it can leverage across multiple platforms. In recent months, the group has made a number of significant changes,” among them a major licensing agreement with Penguin Random House. - Publishers Weekly
“Speaking whale would expand our sense of space and time into a planetary song. I imagine we’d think very differently about polluting the ocean soundscape so carelessly.” - The Guardian (UK)
Hanan Issa: “Growing up, she said she never saw writing as a viable career: ‘I'm working class, raised in a council house and to me, it wasn't considered an option.’” But in 2016, the Prime Minister said something so ignorant that boom. Poetry! - BBC
Hugh Ryan says the book club isn’t just about learning history, but “they had to get people connecting to one another. ‘We're bringing a history of revolution, but we're also trying to make community.’” - Wired
Artists that take inspiration from the headlines are often accused of “profiting” off these stories; whether that’s acceptable is a moral question, since as long as the work is fictionalized, artists are under no legal obligation to get permission from the source of their inspiration, let alone compensate them. - LitHub
“The original New York Trilogy owes a debt to the existential detective, a genre archetype whose cases carry themes of choice, isolation, meaninglessness; not just murder but mortality. … Questions of purpose surround the graphic New York Trilogy — unrelated to any existential searching.” - The Comics Journal
Sales in the genre have electrified the publishing industry, reaching nearly 20 million in 2023 when U.S. book sales overall dipped. While there is no hard data on readership, the audience for romance novels generally is over 80% female. - The Wall Street Journal
It’s a year of firsts for the International Booker: this is the first time that a collection of stories has won; it’s the first winner from the Kannada language; and it’s Banu Mushtaq’s first book to appear in English. At 77, she is also the oldest winner. - The Guardian
“On May 14, Eksmo, Russia's largest publisher … sent a letter to ‘all interested organizations’ (including booksellers) with a list of 50 titles to be ‘disposed of on site or returned if unsold.’ … A government crackdown came a day later, resulting in the arrest of eleven current and former employees of Eksmo.” - Publishers Weekly
“Librarians, who normally curate book collections, would need the school board’s approval before buying books under Senate Bill 13. ... District officials could appoint local advisory councils to review books and make recommendations (for buying or removing particular titles) to the school board.” - The Dallas Morning News (MSN)
“United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has reversed a district court’s preliminary injunction and dismissed free speech claims in Little v. Llano County. The lawsuit, filed in April 2022 by seven Llano, Texas, library patrons, concerns the removal of 17 books from the Llano branch library.” - Publishers Weekly
There’s no other system of encoding information quite like khipu, the knotted strings and cords used to keep records in the Inca Empire. For years, the research into their meaning was at a standstill, but in recent years there’s been progress in both recovering lost khipu and deciphering them. - The Atlantic (MSN)
