"Speech, rather than hearing, has been at the heart of deaf exclusion throughout history. People who were born deaf, or were deafened before they learned to speak (prelingually deaf) were placed in a special category" — typically one that treated them as infants or as cognitively disabled. - History Today
"Some 250 copy editors, marketing assistants and other employees at HarperCollins Publishers went on strike Thursday, with the two sides differing over wages and benefits, diversity policy and union protection." - AP
I don’t think you should write 50,000 words in a month in hopes that you will get discovered and Penguin Random House will buy your Next Great American Novel, Gatorade for Lemurs. I think you should do NaNoWriMo to stick it to capitalism. - Slate
Nüshu, a phonetic, syllabic script (as opposed to the standard Chinese ideogram characters) used by and between women, developed in a rural area of Hunan province. It nearly died out during and after the Cultural Revolution, but interest has revived and it's being taught once again. (video) - BBC
Atwood says, "I just want to know how you are going to get around the giant blue penises." McGregor's only response (other than laughter) is "It's not a literal interpretation but a leap of faith." - Financial Times
There are more ancient surviving writings in hieroglyphics and cuneiform, but the inscription on this 3,700-year-old personal-care item is the oldest to use letters that represent sounds. What does it say? "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard." - The Guardian
“The government has presented a compelling case that predicts substantial harm to competition as a result of the proposed merger of PRH and S&S,” Judge Florence Pan concluded. - Publishers Weekly
"Miser! Miser! is a complete translation of L'Avare (The Miser) of 1668 ... that Burgess wrote in the early 1990s, yet it has never been performed or published. But now it could finally be staged as it will published for the first time in a forthcoming book." - The Guardian
"The Calgary-based Mayr won for her novel ..., which follows a queer, Black sleeping car porter making a treacherous trip from Montreal to Vancouver in 1929." - Toronto Star
I read and write about books for fun. And yet, time and again, my mind goes blank during book discussions, and all I can muster up is “Er, I thought the book was good, because …” - LA Review of Books
After all, publishers spend a fair amount of time on it. "Whether the genre is romance, thriller or fantasy, artists, designers and authors who collaborate on book covers say they're more critical to a book's success or failure than most people understand." - CBC
