“There are two books they are leaving (in the teen section). There are some people not happy about that decision. They feel there is sexually explicit content in them. But our library board has reviewed that and didn’t feel that way.” - Alabama.com
Instead, the Wikimedia Foundation says it will use AI to build new features that “remove technical barriers,” allowing editors, moderators, and patrollers tools that allow them to accomplish what they need to do, without worrying about how to “technically achieve it.” - TechCrunch
Over the past two decades, the U.S. has seen a wave of books preoccupied with our working lives, many of them focused on white-collar office jobs. - The Atlantic
By some estimates, the total worldwide sales of the novel are now upward of thirty million copies. How did “Gatsby” grow so great, and why has it endured so long? - The New Yorker
Duolingo says that building one new course historically has taken “years,” but the company was able to build this new suite of courses more quickly “through advances in generative AI, shared content systems, and internal tooling.” - The Verge
“I’m as interested in an artificial voice as I am in an artificial author, which is to say not at all. … This is the thing: you think it won’t come for you – but it will. Luckily, I’ll be dead or retired by then.” - The Observer (UK)
“Only 40% of parents ... agreed that ‘reading books to my child is fun for me’, according to a survey conducted by Nielsen and HarperCollins. (There’s) a steep decline in ... parents reading aloud to young children, with 41% of 0-to-4-year-olds now being read to frequently, down from 64% in 2012.” - The Guardian
Iowa City is the place where contemporary English literature matters more than anywhere else on earth. The home of arguably the world’s most famous MFA program, Iowa City has authors’ plaques embedded in the sidewalk, over 100 literary readings per year, and roughly 1,000 writers in a community of 75,000. - Public Books
Says founder Jude Cook, “Excitement and energy around new and adventurous fiction is around female authors – and this is only right as a timely corrective. ... (Yet now) stories by new male authors are often overlooked, with a perception that the male voice is problematic.” - The Guardian
“Editor-in-chief and major shareholder James Harding set out his stall in the first issue under its new Tortoise ownership on Sunday, (saying) the paper was leaning into traditions of liberalism and editorial independence which date back to its foundation in 1791.” - Press Gazette (UK)
Independent bookstores and users on BookTok are expressing their frustration with Amazon while encouraging readers to stay off of the online shopping site and instead make the trek to their local bookstore for the day. - Fast Company
“Wikipedia is permitting information manipulation on its platform, including the rewriting of key, historical events and biographical information of current and previous American leaders, as well as other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States." - Washington Post
“The poems in Brontë’s Book of Rhymes were written in tiny script to fit on scraps of paper no larger than playing cards that were hand-stitched together with a carefully written contents page.” Now, everyone can read them. - The New York Times
Might it be time to reread The Masses? "2025 isn’t the first time our neighbors have delighted in violence against a minority, it’s not the first time censors have told us what we can and cannot read.” - LitHub
