As different novelistic styles, genres and methods of production have risen to prominence, they have enabled their own particular way of creating fictional terrain. These fictional worlds have, in turn, shaped our perceptions of the places we inhabit. - The Guardian
"A pivotal midterm election year, COVID frustrations and a backlash against efforts to call out systemic racism — driven disproportionately by white, suburban and rural parents — have made public schools ground zero in the culture wars." - Axios
Decolonising Shakespeare, with its historic links to English national identity, language and culture is a particularly knotty challenge. Shakespeare was writing in a country that had begun to trade in slaves just two years before his birth. - The Conversation
"'Cautionary tales are very important,' says Becky Chambers, one of the leading authors associated with the hopepunk movement, who has won a much-coveted Hugo Award for her sci-fi Wayfarer series. 'But if that is all that you have, you risk nihilism.'" - BBC
If the hatchet job ever died, it is — like Gawker — back with a vengeance. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the hatchet job is now the dominant mode of literary criticism for the internet era. - Los Angeles Review of Books
With audiobooks, voice narrators are (almost) everything. They can make a great story greater and a bad story better. This is especially true with book series. As one book leads to another, a narrator’s voice becomes ever more integral to the listening experience. - Washington Post
Joy Harjo’s story is an American epic, a triumph of the spirit, reshaping history’s lens on the West, rewriting a national myth of endless space. - The Daily Beast
Bad Art Friends are far from new. "Case in point: the rift between Émile Zola, novelist/playwright/founder of the naturalism movement, and painter Paul Cézanne. Their decades-long friendship was destroyed when Zola ... wrote a book heavily featuring a self-destructive, unsuccessful painter." - LitHub
And n+1 magazine doesn't mean the ones you do in school. No, it's professional book reviews that are in trouble, according to that magazine. But hold up: "The only thing eulogized as frequently as the novel is the 'honest' book review." - Los Angeles Review of Books
"There are very few children’s books, or books in general, published in Karen in the United States, and much of what exists originated in St. Paul ... the library system has published three children’s books in Karen since 2015." - Sahan Journal (Minnesota)
The photo is a comforting image for booklovers - the shelves, the lights, the chairs - but why does it regularly, and randomly, trend on social media? Sadly, the library "doesn’t even exist anymore," at least not in the form of the image. But the picture will never die. - The New York Times
The fragments are accounts and logbooks from the port from which blocks of white limestone (now long gone) that encased the Great Pyramid were sent to Giza. They record how supplies were loaded and shipped, the size of the crews, how they were fed, etc. - History Today
Instead, the publishing conglomerate’s decision to back away from Mailer points to a different set of financial imperatives, as well as a growing impulse among publishing executives to blame business decisions on junior staff—the industry’s version of inventing someone to be mad at. - The New Republic
Charlotte Higgins: "Greek myths don't exist in canonical forms: they are to be retold in the moment, and exist only as contaminated, and endlessly recontaminated, versions of themselves. That makes it a realm, I think, of creative invitation rather than of austere exactitude." - Literary Hub
