Ukrainians frequently speak of the need to become Ukrainians: to consolidate their culture, language, and institutions after centuries of imperial domination. What Ukrainians see as a work in progress, however, Russia interprets as weakness; it views Ukraine as an accident of history. - The Atlantic
As the pandemic enters its third year, a cluster of new studies now show that about a third of children in the youngest grades are missing reading benchmarks, up significantly from before the pandemic. - The New York Times
"Artificial intelligence could bring to life lost texts, from imperial decrees to the poems of Sappho, researchers have revealed, after developing a system that can fill in the gaps in ancient Greek inscriptions and pinpoint when and where they are from." - The Guardian
In 2019, after years of management turmoil and falling revenue, James Daunt (who turned around British chain Waterstones) was brought in to fix things. He says that though the cafe and newsstand business hasn't yet recovered from COVID, book sales are up more than 5% from 2019. - Publishers Weekly
There’s an appealingly simple sociolinguistic view, one my grizzled inner skeptic appears to have embraced, whereby words function as vectors of status: where vocabulary and diction map faithfully to acculturation and lifestyle, where every social stratum has its vernacular and every vernacular its social stratum. - LitHub
"A team using techniques more commonly used to track wildlife estimates that 68 percent of chivalric and heroic works produced in medieval Europe survive today. For individual manuscripts, or handwritten copies of literary works, that figure drops to 9 percent." - Smithsonian Magazine
Scholar Silvia Ferrara suggests that — since we don't have a Rosetta Cord giving us a text side-by-side in Inca knots and Spanish letters — we take an approach something like the way Amy Adams's linguist character in Arrival deciphered the aliens' squid-ink emissions. - Literary Hub
"My background as an author is in young adult fiction, an area in which sensitivity readers are common, especially in the US, so I’m less fazed. I have also been a sensitivity reader, informally." - The Guardian
The state House of Representatives has approved an amendment that removes the exemption libraries, museums, and schools had from a longstanding law against exposing minors to "pornography," including any verbal descriptions of sexual excitement, and "any other harmful material." - Boise State Public Radio
A physical bookstore "requires superb customer service, dedicated staff who provide knowledgeable advice about what to read, an inviting environment in which to browse and shop, and literary activities. ... Most of all, it demands a deep commitment to the local communities that sustain us." - Washington Post
A close reading of Auden's "Musée des Beaux-Arts" reveals a lot about Europe just before WWII - and, perhaps, about our own times. - The New York Times
This metaphor might not work for younger writers, but: "I was suddenly free of the 'logical order' I had thought was so important. ... It was fun. It was hard. It was like making a mixtape for the crush I had on all of my characters at once." - LitHub
Ferrante: "I don’t like artists who imagine themselves shamans, and I would prefer that we definitively stop making the alphabet sacred, that we complete the secularisation of literature, that we stop feeling we’re just below the gods and directly inspired by them." - The Guardian (UK)
After the 2016 election, Fowler couldn't see the point in writing her book about John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln. "I knew pockets of the country clung to the Lost Cause , but I thought they weren’t hugely populated." - The Guardian (UK)
"His health was failing, but he gave every reading his histrionic last ounce. ... As Ruskin explained it, Dickens 'chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire.' The reason the books are melodramatic is that they are melodrama. If you're looking for something else, read Anthony Trollope." - The New Yorker
