WORDS

If They Aren’t Reading, Why Are We Making Fun Of Them?

Literary ridicule used to sting politicians into shame. Now they don't read books, don't care about cultural criticism, and certainly don't lose sleep over clever wordplay. Writers are shadowboxing with ghosts. — New York Review of Books

Book Reviews Die Hard: Taking Enlightenment With Them

As traditional literary criticism gasps its last, so goes reasoned public discourse. David Bell chronicles how digital age killed the gatekeepers—and maybe critical thinking itself. — Liberties Journal

Poets Are All About Words. What Happens When Those Words Start Slipping Away?

Because the cells that make up the mind are material, they can degrade or die. When neurons degrade, starve, or die, the essential connections our minds make to our muscles start to sputter. - LA Review of Books

When The AI Police Are Wrong

The Originality.ai reports on his draft, which he shared with The Times, showed that adding or deleting even just a few sentences produced wildly different results. “What if publishers or agents start running these A.I. tools on everybody?” Bricio said. “Everybody is going to walk on eggshells from now on.” - The New York Times

Pew Study On Reading: Americans Still Prefer Print Books

Print continues to be the only book format used by a majority of Americans. Roughly two-thirds of adults say they have read a physical book in the past 12 months, according to our October survey. - Pew Center

Paramount Pictures Launches Its Own Book Publishing Imprint

“Operating under the products & experiences division, Paramount Global Publishing ‘will develop complementary publishing content inspired by its iconic portfolio of brands and franchises as well as generate new IP through the creation of original stories.’” - Publishers Weekly

Library On The US/Canada Border Gets A Door On The Canadian Side

For decades, people in Stanstead were allowed to walk around the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, but last year the U.S. limited access. Instead of walking a few metres, you’d have to drive down the street and go through a border crossing just to get in the front door. - CTV

In Praise Of Ghostwriting

Ghostwriting has an undeservedly bad reputation. Even without AI, some readers feel betrayed if the name on a book’s cover doesn’t tell the whole story. - The Atlantic

U.S. Court Of Appeals Rules That Iowa’s School-Library-Book-Banning Law May Stand

“In a blow to the freedom to read in the United States, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that a controversial 2023 Iowa law … can go into effect, reversing a lower court decision and sending the case back for a third hearing.” - Publishing Perspectives

Eco-Dystopian Novels From Africa And Asia Push The Form

Speculative and futuristic visions of environmental calamity are being imagined globally through environmental fiction. Eco-dystopian novels can help people process their fears or mourn the loss of a more stable climate. - The Conversation

The Market For Non-Fiction Reporting In Books Is Contracting

These developments suggest a rough future for a certain kind of writing: nonfiction that’s based on reportage more than on personal experience or celebrity—a.k.a. long fact, literary nonfiction, or narrative nonfiction. - The New Republic

Does There Even Need To Be A Separate New York Times Magazine Anymore?

In ink-on-dead-trees print, sure. But a large majority of the newspaper’s readers consume the Times online or on an app, where the difference between the magazine’s articles and those of the regular newspaper is barely visible. - New York Magazine (MSN)

Fact-Checker Jasper Lo On His Illegal Firing From The New Yorker

“Why me? I wondered. I had finished my three-year term as the first vice chair of the New Yorker Union the week prior. Condé Nast had violated our collective bargaining agreement and broken labor law dozens of times, but it had never attempted something as reckless as illegally firing union leaders.” - The Nation

How Two Recent AI Publishing “Scandals” Will Changing The Books Industry

Stories like Shy Girl and The New York Times’ profile of AI romance author Coral Hart, who boasted of using AI to write and self-publish 200 hundred books across 21 pen names, demonstrate that theoretical disputes did not prepare us to be confronted with the reality of AI. - The Conversation

Book Science And The Art Of Preserving Old Books

Book scientists are working tirelessly with an array of technologies — including microscopes, multispectral imaging and artificial intelligence — to recover, understand and preserve many valuable ancient texts. - The Conversation

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