I've "come to see Keller’s mainstream image and story as a textbook example of “inspiration porn,” where disabled people’s lives are flattened into saccharine narratives about overcoming adversity, usually designed to make nondisabled people feel uplifted and grateful." - The New York Times
The Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library in Memphis hosts "financial literacy seminars, jazz concerts, cooking classes, and many other events — more than 7,000 at last count. You can check out books and movies, but also sewing machines, bicycle repair kits and laptop computers." - Smithsonian Magazine
It all started in the very first issue of The New York Daily Times on Sept. 18, 1851. In an article on Page 2 headlined “Snap-Shots at Books, Talk and Town,” the paper laid out its ambitious plans for covering books and the publishing industry. - The New York Times
The announcement comes seven months after high-profile editor Joshua Wolf Shenk was forced to resign after an indecent exposure incident on Zoom and multiple accusations of inappropriate behavior. The final issue will be February/March 2022. - AP
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
