ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

TikTok Is Now An Integral Part Of The Book Market

"Early last year, the publishing industry noticed that books readers gushed about on TikTok were showing up on bestseller lists. ... A year later, #BookTok has become a powerful force in the world of books, helping to create some of the biggest sellers on the market." - The New York Times

The US Has Lost 360 Newspapers Since 2019

"That is on top of the 2,500 closures since 2004 documented in earlier reports. The result is even more 'news deserts' in poorer and rural communities and a growing split between haves and have-nots in access to local news." - Poynter

The Poetry Of Marilyn Monroe

She wrote poetry regularly, though she never published any of it. Sure, she was no Marianne Moore, but there's real thought and feeling in her verse. As her friend Norman Rosten put it, "She had the instinct and reflexes of the poet, but she lacked the control." - The Paris Review

What Print Books Are In A Time Of Digital Dominance

Perhaps the term “antiquarian,” which traditionally referred to old, valuable books, often first editions and manuscripts, now seems to me to apply to all books. Books, by definition, have become, if not antiquarian, antiquated in their material form. They have become artifacts.  - The Smart Set

A Love Story Created By Artificial Intelligence (And What It Does And Doen’t Mean For Writers)

Stephen Marche: "The love story below is my attempt to develop an idealized love story out of all the love stories that I have admired. ... "Autotuned Love Story" certainly isn't mine. ... It's the love story of the machines interacting with all the love stories I have loved." - Literary Hub

Canadian Libraries Slammed By Hate Groups Over LGBTQ-Friendly Programs

More than half a dozen libraries and drag performers, from Saint John to Victoria, reported being inundated online and over the phone by homophobic slurs and, in some cases, threats of violence. - CBC

How The Lexicographers At The OED Try To Keep Up

The English language evolves at such a pace that, for the OED lexicographers, the goalposts aren’t so much shifting as sprinting away from them. - New Statesman

Queer Desire And Pakistani Life

Novelist Taymour Soomro: "It was important to me to write about queerness in Pakistan for so many reasons, including making visible experiences like my own in Pakistan, and challenging reductive narratives ... about Muslim barbarism and homophobia." - The Guardian (UK)

A Long Island Library Board Has Reversed Its Ban On Pride Displays

Way to not entirely buckle under to homophobes, Smithtown Library Board. - LitHub

What Makes For A Good Group Biography?

"The questions that make these biographies sing—what makes this group of people actually interesting, not just noteworthy? Why, of all the relationships in a life, were these so particularly influential?—take real searching to answer." - The Atlantic

A Chance Find, A Storied Past, A Relaunch

How does a writer like Bette Howland fall into obscurity - and then get rediscovered? Thank the sale rack at Housing Works Bookstore in Brooklyn, for the latter part, anyway. As for the obscurity part? Surprise: Single motherhood isn't great for writers. - Washington Post

Some States Aren’t Stopping With Censoring School Libraries

States like Kentucky, with conservative legislatures, are taking control over what books can be in public libraries as well. Doesn't sound fascist at all, nope. - NPR

The Most Multi-Lingual Place On Earth (With Culture To Match)

The many languages spoken here, though mostly belonging to the Indo-European family, still more narrowly to the Dardic sub-family within the Indo-Aryan group, are so different from each other that the people of one linguistic community have to rely on a third language. - Aeon

How A Phantasmagorical Poem By Charles Darwin’s Grandfather First Set Down In Words The Idea Of Photosynthesis

In 1789, Erasmus Darwin — physician, pathologist, abolitionist, and botanist as well as poet — published a strange set of cantos under the title The Loves of the Plants, using mythical creatures and deities of antiquity to make then-new scientific concepts more accessible. And in one of his footnotes ... - Literary Hub

Maybe Alt-Weeklies Aren’t Dying Out After All

"(As) with the robust launch of online local newsrooms in the last two years, some alts are finding new ground in old traditions. Here are three doing similar things in very different ways." - Poynter

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