In past years it has proven so unpredictable that even one of its winners likened the literary award to “a chicken raffle”. Referring to an Australian custom of raffling poultry as a fundraising activity, the phrase suggests luck, rather than talent, is key to scooping the prize. - The Conversation
"After 12 years and 261 million euros (more than $256 million) of renovations, the country's national library in the heart of Paris has reopened and is showing off more than 900 of its treasures." - The New York Times
"The Palafoxiana Library ... owes its existence to one of Puebla's early Catholic bishops, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, who in 1646 donated his private library of 5,000 volumes to a local religious college — with the hope that anyone who knew how to read would have access to them." - AP
It turns out that Cecily Chaumpaigne, believed to have been the victim of Chaucer's alleged attack, was on the same side as Chaucer in the legal case at hand: they were both defendants in a lawsuit by Chaumpaigne's former employer, whom she left to work for Chaucer. - The New York Times
"Our current problem isn't an insufficient amount of Black representation in literature but a surfeit of it. And in many cases that means simply another marketing opportunity, a way to sell familiar images of Blackness to as broad an audience as possible." - The New York Times Magazine
If you asked a hundred contemporary poets working today to define what they meant by poetry you would find yourself orbiting a hundred differing, often conflicting definitions. - The Point
Not even great poets can live off their poetry — “The Waste Land” sold only about 330 copies in its first six months — so Eliot, from the mid-1920s on, worked as a director of a new publishing firm called Faber & Faber. - Washington Post
How refreshing it was to see the Booker prize take another turn last month – putting the short in shortlist, as it were – with a record-breakingly succinct nominee: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan is just 116 pages. The Spectator
"Rod McKuen sold millions of poetry books in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a regular on late-night TV. He released dozens of albums, wrote songs for Sinatra, and was nominated for two Oscars." (He was also an astounding liar.) How did he disappear from the culture so completely? - Slate
The bookshop, which opened in 2019, was in its infancy as a business when it was forced to close during Covid lockdowns. It managed to stay afloat, but Mrs Fridd feared the cost of living crisis could become "the straw that broke the camel's back". - BBC
“I started to be a witness to events. This is a primal function of art … More talented writers of the next generations will take this raw material and make a beautiful novel about it. But being in the centre of the hurricane you just try to grab the tiniest moments of your grief.” - The Guardian
"I wonder if the fact that Elvis relies on biographical research rather than a novel made it the more successful film for me (and most critics). ... Is the problem with Blonde, Blonde?" - LitHub
Yes, BookTok. But not only BookTok. The woman who self-published her first book while she was earning $9 an hour and whose books outsold the Bible in 2021 says, "It's not me ... The readers are controlling what is selling right now." - The New York Times
"Understanding whether or not Japanese literature is changing also requires defining 'Japanese literature,' and defining the 'Japanese' part of the term is challenging enough. Does writing in other languages by diaspora Japanese qualify? Or writing by non-ethnically Japanese writers living in Japan in Japanese, or other languages?" - Metropolis (Japan)
