The company faced several challenges in recent years, including a data breach in 2022 – after the company was acquired by a private investment group in 2021 – that put it in what independent library consultant Marshall Breeding called "a weak financial position." - NPR
Not exactly, no, but science journalist Michael Greshko may have taken a big step toward that goal. No one had yet figured out a workable approach to even attempt reading the famously indecipherable 15th-century codex, but Greshko has demonstrated that a medieval-style cipher using cards and dice is plausible. - Live Science
How, in 1894, just when literary interest in Sappho was reviving, Belgian-French author Pierre Louÿs (yes, he was a friend of Oscar’s) invented an ancient Greek poetess called Bilitis, composed erotic poetry he attributed to her (he claimed only to have translated it), and created a classic of lesbian literature. - Aeon
“Many teachers are secret revolutionaries and still assign whole books,” said Heather McGuire, a survey respondent who teaches English in New Mexico. I cheer these renegades because I can’t imagine my life – or bringing up my own children – without reading books in print. - The Guardian
According to a YouGov poll released at year’s end, American reading habits stay in the toilet. Four in ten Americans didn’t read a single book during our last spin around the sun. And of the 60% who did venture to a library, most were frugal. - LitHub
To begin the new year at public schools across the state, Utah officials banned three more books. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. - BookRiot
It was not long before people began poking holes in Joan Lowell’s story. But the book didn’t sink—it was a great success, in part for reasons new to her era and familiar to ours. - The New Yorker
If boomers and Gen X are puzzled by the fact that many youngsters are not required to endure the same painstaking labor of mastering cursive that they were, they might be even more surprised — perhaps, even delighted — to hear that some are learning the craft entirely for fun. - Washington Post
The round-up includes books translated from French, Danish, Bulgarian, and Japanese, but the critic says, “for my money, contemporary Chinese writing is the most interesting literature being produced today.” - Irish Times (Archive Today)
“Ambition is everything. Fiction isn’t ballet. It’s not marathoning. You don’t have to start small, with drills or exercises; there’s nothing you need to perfect before moving on. Your budget for characters and sets and props and visual effects is infinite.” - The Guardian (UK)
“This would be a more effective way to attract young people, and it also happens to be true. When literature was considered transgressive, moralists couldn’t get people to stop buying and reading dangerous books. Now that books are considered virtuous and edifying, moralists can’t persuade anyone to pick one up.” - The Atlantic (MSN)
The persistent cultural resistance to Bellow, who remains popularly read yet broadly under-appreciated by the taste-making classes, comes in several flavors. Over the decades he’s come to be categorized by critics as a hundred different kinds of “too much”... - The Metropolitan Review
