ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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Fifteen-Second Book Reviews On TikTok Have Amassed 26 Billion Views

BookTok, as it's known, is an unusually lively corner of the mini-video app's subculture: the most popular reviewers can get a couple hundred thousand followers, the most watched videos rack up a million or more views, and yes, they can affect sales. - The Guardian

Nobel-Winning Writer Orhan Pamuk Charged — Again — With Insulting Turkey And Turkishness

The particular crimes he's accused of this time are insulting Atatürk and making fun of the Turkish flag in his latest novel, Nights of Plague. A judge in Istanbul had rejected the case, but the attorney who brought the charges successfully appealed. - The Guardian

Oxford University’s Library Was A Mess. Then Sir Thomas Bodley Made An Extraordinary Offer

Over the course of fifteen years, until his death in 1613, Bodley would oversee the transformation of Oxford’s library from this empty shell to the finest institutional library in Europe. - LitHub

Being Bilingual Really Does Help Your Brain. It Took America A Long Time To Figure That Out

From the start of World War I, for about 50 years, scientists and the government were convinced that using another language alongside English decreased brain function as well as making one less than fully American. Finally we're getting to understand why and how that's not true. - Literary Hub

The Little Engine Trying To Chug Its Way Up The Hill: Literary Review Of Canada Turns 30

Thirty years on, the LRC still feels like a very Canadian experiment, addressing the country’s challenges even as it faces them itself. - Toronto Star

Spotify Moves Into Audiobooks The Silicon Valley Way — By Buying A Company

The acquisition of audiobook platform Findaway lets Spotify "quickly bring a large catalog of audiobooks to its massive user base … in the way the company jump-started its push into podcasts with the acquisitions of Gimlet, Anchor, Parcast and The Ringer." - Variety

Five Books That Will Change The Way You Think About Climate Change

In contrast to the simplistic idea that all we need to do is implement a set of technological and lifestyle changes, they offer a new way of understanding and relating to nature. - The Conversation

The Trope Of “Hot” Women In Literature

A cursory review of Western literature and fiction suggests that the instinct to render fictional heroines “hot” has both a long history and one which continues to this day. - LitHub

Novelists Could Take A Cue Or Two From Poets

Or so says a novelist who took a poetry class that helped her move forward after a stale period of writer's block. - LitHub

So Sorry That We Missed National Cliche Day

Oh: "Cliché comes from the printing process when a metal plate was used to physically transfer ink to paper. The term echoes the imitative sound of the plate coming off the page and was a way to represent an image again and again in nearly identical form." - Salon

A Changing Climate Changes The Oxford English Dictionary

For instance, global heating "conveys 'more emphatically the seriousness of climate change caused by human activity and the urgent need to address it.' After all, global warming connotes a kind of coziness when there is nothing cozy about a heating planet." - CBC

Dostoevsky Totally Did NaNoWriMo

Just not on a computer, in November, with thousands of other people. - LitHub

How Shakespeare Drove Publishing And Publishing Drove Shakespeare In The 1700s

In the mid-1730s, Robert Walker waged a price war with the London publishing establishment, driving the cost of individual play editions down to just one penny each. This led to a significant expansion of Shakespeare’s readership. - The Conversation

Co-opting Woke

Charles Blow: "Perhaps no other word of the moment is so under attack as “woke,” a word born as a simple yet powerful way of saying, be aware of and alert to how racism is systemic and pervasive and suffuses American life." - The New York Times

Writers Ought To Be Trained The Way Actors Are

"Actors in training get to try out different techniques and approaches, learning to develop a character through movement, script analysis, or emotional connection; they take classes honing their bodies and voices. In my MFA writing program, we got … workshop and some books." - Catapult

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