In the prewar period, university professors were apt to make vague aesthetic judgments about a book’s “beauty” or “soul” before lobbing in a few comments about the author’s mother or the publishing practices of the time. Richards’s students, by contrast, were asked to exclude all such background blather. - The Guardian
Natural history can certainly accommodate a profusion of perspectives – indeed, it will always benefit from greater diversity in how we look and think. But I wonder if there are unhelpful dichotomies in play, where we pit ‘knowledge’ against lived experience, against emotional engagement... - Aeon
He sent anonymous comments and messages to Merriam-Webster, which publishes a widely used online dictionary, condemning the company for changing the definitions of words including “boy, “girl” and “trans woman.” - The New York Times
"When you’ve written something by hand, the only person who could have done it is you. It’s unmistakable you wrote this, touched it, laid hands and eyes upon it. Something written by hand is a piece of your personality on paper. Typed words are not a fair swap." - LitHub
Aaron Blabey "had been working a series of increasingly dissatisfying day jobs — from acting to advertising — and although his children’s books were 'warmly received' (as he put it), the earnings were not supporting his family." He gave himself an ultimatum. It worked. - The New York Times
Indie bookstores are thriving. "During the lockdowns these small shops discovered how much they were valued by their customers; booksellers tell me about switching to mail order, doing deliveries by bike and on foot, setting up subscription schemes ... reinforcing personal relationships that have built up over years." - The Guardian (UK)
Why not, she says - there’s no reason not to work just as hard promoting your book as you did writing it. "The worst that can happen is you’ve spent a little energy on something that didn’t result in you being a bestseller." - Irish Times
For Alaskans whose people's languages are Yup'ik and Iñupiak, "the spelling bee gives students the opportunity to practice reading and writing a language they might only speak or hear." - Alaska Public Radio
Sales rose 5% in the UK, for instance. BookTokkers, aka TikTok users, are "replicating the time-honoured sales method that bookshop staff have often employed – suggesting books to shoppers that they might like. And that’s one area that the pandemic hit hard." - The Guardian (UK)
With Bookstagrammers and BookTokers nearly equal in influence, and with its carefully maintained approach of relative objectivity, "the Book Review may have the luxury of being the only game in town, but that doesn't spare it the responsibility of making sure people show up to play." - The Nation
The difficulty in understanding transformers lies in their abstraction. Whereas a conventional program follows an understandable process, like outputting the word “grass” whenever it sees the word “green,” a transformer converts the word “green” into numbers and then multiplies them by certain values. - Nautilus
As 2022 began, the U.S. trade publishing business was dominated by what has been called the Big Five—Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan. - Publishers Weekly
— that there's "an immediate drop in content." The drop isn't exactly a surprise, but what one lead researcher found "shocking" was that the fall, and the staffing cuts that lead to it, happen so quickly after acquisition. - Nieman Lab
