WORDS

The inmates were part of the very first edition of a new, government-sponsored literary prize bestowed by prisoners. The award, called the Goncourt des détenus, or inmates’ Goncourt, is the most recent of several offshoots of France’s most prestigious literary award. - The New York Times

Opponents of censorship heartily agree that parents should have an important say in how schools work and how public libraries serve our children. What we’re against is a willful ideological minority imposing its views on everyone else. - Washington Post

"Books are precious to their owners. Their worth, emotional and monetary, is comparably less to anyone else." - Washington Post

But then did, and now recommends to everyone. "Literature should not be something we approach out of a sense of duty. But many lengthy, complex, and well-known books really are that good." - The Atlantic

Or, what books "temporarily ruined" their lives in 2022. - Paris Review

Or at least that they'll buy the proceedings - cleaned up from PDF form, with introductions by politicians or allies - as a book. - NPR

Truly, sort of. Since the author of Station Eleven said once in an interview that she was married, she couldn't convince Wikipedia she was now divorced - not without another published interview. - Slate

Al Saqi, a literary institution that opened in 1978, will close at the end of 2022. One of the owners: "You'd meet Arabs in London, and they would say, when I - when my family visits from abroad, I take them to Big Ben and to Al Saqi Books." - NPR

Quote from the people who have lived there for some time: "We are not tenants, we have a major share in the house and have put in hundreds of thousands of pounds of our own money. ... It’s our home and we have no plans to move." - LitHub

"The environmental crisis is one of overconsumption, carbon emissions, and corporate greed. But it’s also a crisis of miscommunication." - Wired

We tend to imagine the memoirist as a naive spiller of information about their life, as in religious confession, rather than the intentional constructor of a narrative. - The Atlantic

Either way, here’s what I know: I’m tired of losing outlets to conglomeration. I’m tired of culture being under siege because of money, of corporations and the wealthy buying platforms and destroying them just because they can. - Los Angeles Times

In ancient India, the grammarian Pāṇini developed a set of rules that basically constitute an algorithm, allowing any word or phrase to be coined in perfect Sanskrit.  But modern scholars could never figure out Pāṇini's instruction on what to do if rules conflict — until a Ph.D, student's eureka moment. - Vice

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has documented many of the words that these new communities of English speakers have added to the vocabulary. - The Guardian

"The outcome of the strike, which began Nov. 10, ... may have a ripple effect on jobs across the publishing industry. Its impact may be seen in the quantity and diversity of books that are published for years to come." - MSN (The Washington Post)