At the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Mass., "the first speaker took the lectern at noon after the strike of eight bells. 'Call me Ishmael,' the famous opening words, sent a ripple of applause through the room." - Slate
The author of a book about King Charles and other members of the Royal Family being held hostage says, "the move showed the Queen had 'a fantastic sense of humour.'" - BBC
It isn't pretty: "Publishing is competing with other forms of entertainment in an increasingly fragmented media landscape, and an author with existing name recognition is a tempting prospect." - The Guardian (UK)
The issues: "The company wanted to have it both ways: to exert the cultural influence of a major media company without shouldering any more responsibility (or economic burden) than is expected of a mere service provider, such as Gmail.-" The Atlantic
Both "wokeism" and "wokery" refer to culture war issues, though "wokery" has as a second definition cooking with a wok. Among other terms newly added are "safe word", "talkboard", "PFAS", "Gradgrindian", "taliswoman", "hypnic jerk", and "-splaining" as a suffix ("straightsplaining", "mumsplaining"). - The Guardian
The main version of ChatGPT has, since its launch last year, been able to write a children's story, but GPTs allow parents—or anyone, really—to constrain the topic and start with specific prompts, such as a child's name. This means anyone can generate personalized stories starring their kid and their favorite character. Wired
Up to the immediate post-WWII period, publishing was a fairly local, personal business, with houses founded by whiskered men shipping out books to stores on an irregular basis. Today we have the Big Five—HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and Penguin Random House. - The Bulwark
The LAPL, which manages 73 branches and houses more than 8 million books, has lately been much more ambitious than even the average big-city library system, aggressively expanding its special collections in recent years. But acquiring an entire press takes the system to a whole new level. - Los Angeles Times
After she discovered the work of African-American spoken-word poets, Vanessa Chisakula co-founded Word Smash Poetry in Lusaka, Zambia's capital, and she's seen poetry events spread across the country in the years since. - The Guardian
"Helped by a 1.7% increase in the fourth quarter, unit sales of print books fell only 2.6% in 2023 from 2022. ... The dip was less than many industry members had feared this summer, when sales were steadily declining and were down 4.1% after the first nine months of the year." - Publishers Weekly
"Just under 300 people responded to the survey, which was intended to collect data about copyright, payment, royalties, and other labor issues. … Only 11.5% of respondents reported earning 100% of their income from literary translation work, and … 63.5% reported an annual income of less than $10,000 from literary translation." - Publishers Weekly
For all its newfound task as “knowledge navigator and facilitator” in an increasingly complex and connected world, the library’s traditional role has also benefited from its new home: library book loans, far from declining, have risen by almost 10%. - The Guardian
“Libraries are places where people from all different backgrounds can interact,” Buzzy Nielsen, a program manager for the State Library of Oregon, said. “You see a big cross-section of your community.” - Oregon ArtsWatch
Sure, Google Translate can help out with ordering a coffee in another language, but "neural machine-translation models can translate only about 30 percent of novel excerpts—usually simple passages—with acceptable quality, as determined by native speakers." - The Atlantic
