Perhaps surprisingly in 2021, that magazine is in Afrikaans: Huisgenoot ("Home Companion"), founded in 1916 to help form a national Afrikaner consciousness in the wake of the Anglo-Boer Wars. Yet Huisgenoot has changed immensely in the past century, just as its country has. - The Economist
Being handed control of the company, which is valued at $1.2 billion, has made Iole Lucchese, 55, one of the most powerful women in book publishing, and the stock provides her — the daughter of a construction worker and a homemaker — with significant wealth. - The New York Times
One reason, it must be said, is that a certain type of person wants to be seen as loving the book. (Yep, virtue-signaling.) Yet Middlemarch still matters because of its expert examination of one of life's fundamental features: disappointment. - The New Statesman
Hoping to shake off the last lingering shame from the disastrous UVA rape-case article, new editor Noah Shachtman and CEO Gus Wenner (Jann's son) plan to cast a critical eye not only on politics, but on the popular music stars that typically grace its cover. - The Washington Post
"Dial-a-Poem received more than a million calls before it lost funding and ended in 1971. There were complaints of indecency, claims that the poems incited violence. The FBI investigated." - The Guardian (UK)
Lively, who's 88: "When I started, publishers didn’t expect a breakthrough with a first or second book. They were prepared to stay with an author for a long time. They seem to be more driven by marketing now." - The Guardian (UK)
Solange's creative studio, Saint Heron, hired a community bookstore founder to "curate" the first 50 items in the library, which will be mailed to those who request them for a 45-day loan period. - Hyperallergic
"Earhart was one of the earliest aviators, a record-setter, a college professor and well ahead of her time as a champion for women’s rights. Yet she is also one of history’s more enigmatic figures." - Washington Post
"Carmen Mola" was always pseudonym, but the fact that "she" was three scriptwriter men in tuxedos shocked the crowd (and the crime-thriller-reading world) at the Premio Planeta literary awards in Barcelona. - Washington Post
But it is particularly virulent right now, especially in states where white parents and legislators feel threatened by - well, what? Not actual Critical Race Theory, but in some cases, literally any books by Black writers. - The Atlantic
"Nearly everyone who knew him is gone, but the roses are a sort of saeculum that includes Orwell. I was suddenly in his presence in a way I hadn’t expected, and I was in the presence of a living remnant of the essay." - The Guardian (UK)
Mike Rose at UCLA "heralded a paradigm shift in the way writing is taught in our educational system. … (He) asked teachers to understand students as whole people, with mixed feelings about academic writing, who are nonetheless trying to do a very difficult thing." - The New Yorker
"What, then, do Rumi and his followers on the Sufi 'path of love' really mean when they say 'love'? The answer turns out to be more radical than even the most far-fetched of modern misreadings of this erotic spiritual tradition." - Psyche
Yes, the obvious candidates are here — Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1984, Dune, Asimov, Bradbury, Octavia Butler — along with some you perhaps didn't know about because they weren't originally written in English and some you might not realize count as science fiction. - Book Riot
