“Hadi Matar, the man who severely injured novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 stabbing attack, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison — the maximum for attempted murder.” - NPR
Yes: “Friends do things for each other all the time without needing to put on our critic’s caps. We attend concerts, go to gallery showings, poetry readings, plays, dance recitals, performance art displays. We are not critics in these instances, we are comrades.” - LitHub
British historians were able to verify the document’s true authenticity after an academic stumbled across the item while looking through Harvard Law School’s online archives. - CNN
Specifically, the bill, HB 1375, authored by state Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, would hold bookstores legally liable for the "distribution, transmission, or display of harmful material to a minor." - WFAA
Used-book stores or vintage-record shops, where hidden gems lurk like geodes waiting to be split open, play a role, too. Such venues don’t just preserve art; they bring enthusiasts together, spark conversations and cultivate new audiences. - The New York Times
When students, and school boards, ask, Why history? What are we supposed to be getting out of this? the best answer is still that one word: judgment. We demand it of all professionals: doctors, lawyers, chefs, and quarterbacks. And we need it most in the profession of citizen.
“’The Shameful Dream’ … is a short story about a Londoner named Caffery Bone. Fleming’s protagonist is the literary editor of Our World, a periodical designed to bring power and social advancement to Lord Ower,’ its owner. … (It) appears in this week’s Strand Magazine along with another obscure work, … Graham Greene’s ‘Reading at Night.’” - AP
On Capitol Hill, Democrats said Tuesday they did not believe that Blanche was the acting librarian — and Republicans, who have repeatedly deferred to Trump even as he has wrested control of federal spending from authorities, indicated that they wanted to maintain their power around the library. - Washington Post
“A class action lawsuit was filed Monday by the Authors Guild, along with independent scholars and writers, against the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and officials within the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for terminating millions in committed grants from Congressional funds.” - ARTnews
“Today, Audible announced it would begin offering AI-powered narration to select publishers. AI translation services will launch in beta later this year.” CEO Bob Carrigan pointed out that only between two and five percent of all books are available in audio and that the company’s goal is to expand the audio content available. - Publishers Weekly
“We are processing a lot of complex emotions in this moment, as we imagine you are too in light of recent agency developments, but know that we remain unwavering in our overall support of all of you and the critical work you do.” - N+1
We all pretended that we knew what close reading meant. We not only talked about it but we did it. We knew it when we saw it, and we knew when it was done badly—but what it was, in the end, we couldn’t exactly say. - The Nation
Their outputs are a mélange of the passion and experimentalism of the amateurs with the polish and ambition of the pros, and they often possess a briskness that feels shaped by an awareness that an endless selection of other stories is mere clicks away. - The New Yorker
In some ways we’re moving backwards from the model of the lay reader versus professional literary critic. Today there are far fewer lay readers than there used to be, but there is also the emergence of extremely invested, specialized nonacademic reader communities enabled by social media, for example. - The Point
