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WORDS

The World Is Drowning In Old Books

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

The Classic Books This Reviewer Never Meant To Read

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

Read Like The Staff Of The Paris Review

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

Publishers Hope People Will Read The January 6 Report Cover To Cover

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

This Emily St John Mandel Interview Is A Testament To The Power Of The Press

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

London’s First, Groundbreaking Arabic-Language Bookshop To Close

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

Evelyn Waugh’s Mansion Sells, But Superfans Living There Refuse To Leave

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

Storytelling May Save The Planet, If Anything Can

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

What Good Memoirs Can Do For You

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

BookForum Dead? Does This Look Like A Dying Magazine?

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

An Ancient Grammar Mystery Is Solved, Clarifying A 2,500-Year-Old “Language Machine”

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

English Is A Global Language. New Words Are Coming From Everywhere

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 Long HarperCollins Strike Will Have A Real Effect On What Books People Get To Read

"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)

France’s Top Book Prize Has A New Offshoot, With The Winner Chosen By Prison Inmates

"Some prisons have organized their own literary prizes, but the inmates' Goncourt" — Goncourt des détenus, as it's called in French — "is unprecedented in size and reach, with about 500 people detained in 31 prisons taking part. It is also prominently backed and promoted by the French government." - The New York Times

Why Should Anyone Write In Cursive Anymore?

I understand that handwriting imprints the memory better — I notice it even in adulthood — but I am skeptical that there is a reason the handwriting is better done in cursive. - The New York Times

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