British writer Hanif Kureishi told Prospect Magazine that “nobody would have the balls today to write The Satanic Verses.” He might have added that no one would have the balls to defend it. Most writers, Kureishi continued, live quietly, and “they don’t want a bomb in the letterbox.” - Harper's
Partly because I am this strange thing called a linguist and partly because I am the kind of linguist who wants to know a little of every language on Earth, I have curled up with this book with a glass of wine countless times over the past couple of months just to savor the cornucopia that this dictionary is....
Despite the indignation of the critics and the high-mindedness of the revisers, the truth is that most of the edits to the Dahl books are of very little importance. Many are slight (replacing “old hag” with “old crow”) or inscrutable... - The New York Times
"These changes ... are handed down in communiqués written by obscure 'experts' who purport to speak for vaguely-defined 'communities,' remaining unanswerable to a public that's being morally coerced. ... The liturgy changes without public discussion, and with a suddenness and frequency that keep the novitiate off-balance, forever trying to catch up." - MSN (The Atlantic)
Did it start out as a few modest tweaks but got out of hand? In any case, there’s a loss in these changes—in vivacity, vigor, concreteness. As any good writer can tell you, we all know what a screechy voice sounds like, but an annoying one could be anything.
"Encyclopedias are not like rose bushes, for which pruning is everything. They are usually the opposite, more like Japanese knotweed, spreading wildly and germinating freely, invasive and persistent in all countries where a foothold is possible." - Literary Hub
I continue to struggle with an imaginative leap into a world that is entirely not my own. I can’t quite seem to achieve the trick of perception, the sinking-in that allows you to half-forget the conscious act of reading. But I’m strangely unmotivated, too, for reasons I can’t fully unravel. - New Statesman
"He empowers booksellers at each location to curate books based on their own quirky, idiosyncratic tastes. It's a strategy that leads to more engaged workers and more interesting stores, (CEO James) Daunt says. And importantly, it's one that Amazon has been unable to replicate." - Fast Company
Encyclopedias have always been a hard sell. Moving a hefty set of books at a big ticket price—toward its last days Britannica sold for $1,500—it could scarcely have been otherwise. - The Wall Street Journal
During the past decade, the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third. Humanities enrollment in the United States has declined over all by seventeen per cent, Townsend found. What’s going on? - The New Yorker
“I have seen a rise of book sales, but I think most of those sales are to adults and people who listen to NPR. People in book deserts are the ones missing out. We shouldn’t have to have a lawsuit in every single school district just to have the books in schools and libraries. It’s such a drain on...
A recent YouGov survey found that a majority of Republicans favors such restrictions, but Democrats and independents are very much against them. And when given a list of 15 potentially sensitive topics, none got a majority of independents or Democrats to agree that they should be banned from classrooms. - Insider
Polyglot texts (texts using multiple languages) have become increasingly common; they are salvos fired against arrogant monolingualism. Monolingual English speakers would do best to join the multilingual world and welcome these texts. - The Conversation
From the 18th century to the 21st, the stats keep rising — number of words, number of entries, number of volumes — and the rival publications proliferate: Compton’s, Caxton’s, Collier’s, Grolier’s, the Oxford and the Columbia, to name a few. - Washington Post
The editors of three science fiction magazines — Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction — said this week that they had been flooded by submissions of works of fiction generated by A.I. chatbots. - The New York Times
