Chicago Public Schools quietly banned and removed the famous graphic novel in 2013. In 2023, a graphic novel will be published that "follows a group of Chicago high school students who fight back against the attempts at censorship in their own school." - Book Riot
Under a program called Books UnBanned, anyone in the US aged 13 to 21 may request a free eCard from the BPL, gaining access to hundreds of thousands of ebooks and audiobooks. The library has even selected a list of the most banned books to make readily available. - Book Riot
Until the middle of the century, its most visible work was crafted by outsiders from the East or Europe, bewildered by what they perceived as the otherness of Southern California, its sun and light, its palm trees. That all began to shift in the 1960s with the emergence of the Watts Writers Workshop. - Los Angeles Times
So's the entire publishing industry. "(The chain's) unique role in the book ecosystem, where it helps readers discover new titles and publishers stay invested in physical stores, makes it an essential anchor in a world upended by online sales and a much larger player: Amazon." - The New York Times
This practise has been brought to light, in part thanks to a TikTok trend whereby some readers have been posting videos about doing just that, even sharing tips on how to do so. Amazon allows readers to return ebooks up to 14 days after purchase, even if the whole book has been read. - Melville House
The so-called Birds' Head Haggadah (ca. 1300) belonged to German parliament member Ludwig Marum, one of the earliest Jews to die in the Holocaust. His grandchildren (three of them survivors themselves) are suing the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the book has been since 1946, for restitution. - The Art Newspaper
The "paradox" is that Hispanics in the US tend to have less heart disease and longer lifespans than non-Hispanic whites despite having higher risk factors. One researcher suggests that particular features of the Spanish language such as the diminutive suffix are a key element of the phenomenon. - The Conversation
"Every writer on nature comes to their own accommodation with the hard facts of wild life. We needn't all look at them too closely, or for too long – but, if we don't look at them at all, I'm not sure what our writing is for." - Aeon
"Obscenity might seem a trivial side note in such a horrific conflict, but understanding it is a way of understanding language, and language has played a big part both in Moscow's professed motivations for this invasion and in Kyiv's defiant response." - The Guardian
When done properly, poetry can help to make science more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Not just as a box-ticking exercise because making sure all sorts of people engage with science. - The Conversation
The statute required any publisher selling e-books in Maryland to make those e-books available to libraries "on reasonable terms." The American Association of Publishers sued for an injunction blocking the law; that was granted, and Maryland’s attorney general has now decided not to appeal. - Publishers Weekly
This system comes with big problems. Chief among them is the issue of publication bias: reviewers and editors are more likely to give a scientific paper a good write-up and publish it in their journal if it reports positive or exciting results. So scientists go to great lengths to hype up their studies. - The Guardian
Although in most cases the word serves to expose implicit power dynamics and level the playing field, it can also be used to do the exact opposite. - The Atlantic
Of the six books now in contention for the prestigious translated fiction award, five were written by women, with three translated by women too. - The Guardian
Today, teams of archivists and librarians are working to save Ukrainian library and museum collections. Their efforts echo the work of the Monuments Men who, during the Second World War, gave “first aid to art and books” and engaged in the recovery of cultural materials. - The Conversation
