Hey, why not? "Being a bad girl may mean unleashing destructive force, or simply shrugging off expectation. It could mean embracing the calamity of selfhood, or reimagining who that self is entirely. To be bad is to be your own." - The Rumpus
"It has been seven months that no one has peeked into the library. It is painful to see the distance between people and books grow.” - The Conversation
The Readers were explicit that this was not to do with any actual words on the page, but because they could tell that I personally had not done “the self-reflection and self-education that is necessary to understand the underlying reason that so many people felt harmed by work”. - Unherd
"Black Opals" had only four issues, in 1927-28, but it's now among the most requested items in the Free Library of Philadelphia's rare books collection, valuable both as literature and as evidence that the 1920s flowering of Black American creativity extended well beyond Upper Manhattan. - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
While digital media completely upended industries like music, movies and newspapers, most publishers and authors still make the bulk of their money from selling bound stacks of paper. - The New York Times
"Wordplay is an embellisher. It prettifies poetry's architecture, … but it won't keep your walls and ceiling from coming down. Still, … it turns out there are moments when wordplay, taking on a structural element, does hold things together." Consider, for instance, the limerick. - Literary Hub
"Written in Montreal in 1956 – the year Cohen published his first poetry collection – A Ballet of Lepers focuses on 'toxic relationships and the lengths one will go to maintain them'." - The Guardian
In the mid-15th century, the mass production born of Gutenberg’s press began to make the index a regular feature of the bound book. But its very ubiquity — and very utility — would make it an intellectual flash point. - The New York Times
A new CBS News poll offers data that should prod Democrats into rethinking these culture-war battles. It finds that surprisingly large majorities oppose banning books on history or race — and importantly, this is partly because teaching about our racial past makes students more understanding of others’ historical experiences. - Washington Post
Having come of age at a time of unprecedented prosperity and opportunity, many have been spoiled and are referred to as “little emperors,” doted upon by their parents, kitted out in designer labels, and free to think only about themselves. - LitHub
As a literary critic, Gates made an impact on the field by helping to establish a canon of African American literature—one that was neither separatist nor a mere appendage to the traditional, white canon. - The New Yorker
Two teams of forensic linguists say their analysis of the Q texts shows that Paul Furber, one of the first online commentators to call attention to the earliest messages, actually played the lead role in writing them. - The New York Times
"As with any compartmentalizing of genre, there is something in the title that implies a diminishment, as if today, as in ancient Greece, the act of eating were too frivolous to be worthy of serious meditation." - T — The New York Times Style Magazine
"As far as the journalistic establishment was concerned, crosswords were another mindless fad used (by tabloids) as a substitute for good editorial, to keep readers coming back — much like BuzzFeed quizzes were in the 2010s." Yet the ways that establishment described the effect of crosswords were tabloidesque. - The Big Think
What happens when a press does more than increase its roster of writers of colour? What happens when diversity is built into its very structure? Mémoire d’encrier suggests that the results can be transformative. - The Walrus
