About 63 percent of us read at least one book last year, an improvement from the 54 percent we saw in 2023.Other sources don’t point to a seismic shift in reading habits, so this may be a refined estimate rather than a trend. - Washington Post
The continent doesn’t need the West to “discover” writers. Instead, “a radical shift is underway, transforming the region’s literary landscape from within and opening up possibilities unimaginable to previous generations of writers.” - The New York Times
“A game’s popularity often depends not on quality, Ingold said, but on the whims of the biggest Twitch streamers or the algorithm that drives Steam, the main distribution platform for computer games. Independent studios struggle to break through. Many close.” - The New York Times
As author Brandon Taylor noted on social media, it’s a little disingenuous for The NYT to publish this article since it’s a whole newspaper that could focus more on books. Still, BookTok was special, and the BookTok goodbyes were intense. - The New York Times
Students in Texas are lobbying their state legislature, and one says, "Student voices have been silenced far too long in decisions affecting our educational realities. Our declaration is the product of diverse student perspectives across Texas coming together to envision a future that serves all of us.” - Book Riot
“'It would be a travesty,' he said. 'What is most entrancing in the book cannot be translated into another medium. People keep forgetting that it’s very…. literary.’ And repeated: 'Ni muerto!'” - LitHub
There's the guy who wrote a love letter to Anne Hathaway and some poems and passed them off as Shakespeare. The guy who faked documents and Teddy Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, and Amelia Earhart. An entire rogues' gallery of Abraham Lincoln forgers. And, of course, the epics of "Ossian." - Literary Hub
"Throughout the study, writers expressed concerns about audiences' reactions to their use of AI assistance for their writing," the authors note. However, the survey results indicate readers didn't find that much difference in the writing samples. - ZDNet
“She’s an actor” simply phases out “actress” and sends it on its way, along with Studebakers, Koogle peanut butter and Red Skelton. It creates no new word poised to inherit the potentially dismissive air that “actress” implied. - The New York Times
He embraced all the stylistic quirks, choppy sentence fragments and run-ons, either darting from point to point like a distracted squirrel or leaning heavily into declarative statements. His voice is overly casual, conversational. - Cleveland Review of Books
The abolition of most forms of censorship, declining paper costs, railway expansion and universal primary education triggered a newspaper boom that saw total daily circulation rise from around 1.5 million in 1870 to nearly 10 million by 1914. - Aeon
The paper, which was owned by the Sun-Times for six years before being sold to a not-for-profit in 2018, has continued to be plagued by the issues facing local news generally in the US. Six non-union staffers have been laid off and the publisher has resigned. - Chicago Sun-Times
"The nonprofit outlet has built a brand on connecting the knowledge of professors and researchers to both the news cycle and a general audience … But could it also work on a sub-national level ... and try to make a dent in the local news crisis? That’s the idea behind The Conversation Local." - Nieman Lab
The urge to track our reading habits is never so strong as it is near the turn of the year, when cultural forces press us to revise ourselves. Like the things we eat or the ways we move our bodies, the books we consume get talked about as yet another avenue for self-improvement. - The Walrus
