ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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In Britain, Thousands Protest The Idea Of Closing To The Public A Library That Was Left To The Nation

The Wallace Collection "is in internal consultation" about closing the library and archive that was left to the country in 1897. Is that even legal? Will anyone notice during the pandemic? (More than 10,000 people certainly have noticed.) - The Guardian (UK)

Turns Out Inaugural Poet Amanda Gorman Was Inspired By Composers

Gorman: "I love Black poets. I love that as a Black girl, I get to participate in that legacy. So that’s Yusef Komunyakaa, Sonia Sanchez, Tracy K. Smith, Phillis Wheatley. And then I look to artists who aren’t just poets. While I was writing the Inaugural poem, I was reading a lot of Frederick Douglass, a lot of Winston Churchill,...

The Book Pirates Loved Voltaire

Booksellers often distrusted Voltaire, because by modifying his texts and multiplying the editions, he alienated their customers. No one wanted to pay good money for a slightly new version of a book that one had already bought. And some booksellers had become disenchanted with his endless variations on the same themes. - Lapham's Quarterly

Why Sherlock Holmes Has Become One Of Our Most Enduring Literary Characters

There are the endless literary takes. There are Anthony Horowitz’s sequels, or Andrew Lane’s tales of a teenage Holmes. Star basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has written novels about Holmes’s older brother Mycroft; Nancy Springer wrote the Enola Holmes books, giving Holmes and Mycroft a younger sibling. James Lovegrove has combined the worlds of Holmes and HP Lovecraft in the...

Why Quarterbacks Say ‘Hut’ And ‘Hike’

Back in 2009, the NFL itself was wondering about that very question. So they asked Ben Zimmer, America's most famous lexicographer, to look into it. Turns out that "hut" in particular is very practical, and it has a pedigree that seems obvious once you think about it. - Mental Floss

Furloughed Staff To Waterstones: Please, At Least Pay Us Minimum Wage! Waterstones: That ‘Would Not Be Prudent’

Britain's relief package for businesses closed by COVID provides 80% of a furloughed employee's salary, even if that salary is only minimum wage. Workers at the country's most popular bookstore chain, most of whom only make minimum wage or a bit more in normal times, are publicly begging the company to top up the government aid. Management says they'd...

How Did A Book Of New Poetry Get Passed Off As The Work Of Ancient Buddhist Nuns?

Matty Weingast's The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns was marketed by America's leading Buddhist publisher — and hailed by many readers — as a translation of the Therigatha, a collection of Pali verse attributed to the very first community of Buddhist nuns. But as scholars familiar with the actual Therigatha got a look, they saw...

Poetry Magazine Faces Down Furor Over Printing Work By Sex Offender

" has doubled down on its decision to publish a poem by a convicted sex offender as part of a special edition dedicated to incarcerated poets, telling critics that 'it is not our role to further judge or punish as a result of their criminal convictions'." - The Guardian

Why Men Should Spend Less Time Watching Porn And More Time Reading Erotica

"Finding your thrills in erotic literature, rather than in video scenes, might take a little longer, but it means caring more about the characters involved, which brings more meaning to the sexual scenes," says totally unbiased erotica author Max Sebastian. "I'm not sure than any other literary genre or visual media honestly appreciates male sexuality the way that erotica...

AI Robot Recommends ‘The 67 Best Books To Give A Woman’

"On its face this list is a little concerning — in a few years, robots might render humans' book-recommending jobs obsolete. I, a human with a book-recommending job, am indeed a little concerned. But if humans aren't stepping up to do the necessary work of recommending 67 books to give a woman, I'm not going to tell a...

Why Write Books That No One Will Read?

"Books are now published in numbers so vast that the writing of one can no longer be presumed to be an act of communication between writer and reader. Yet even books that aren’t read, and stand little chance of ever being read, can have their value." - LitHub

Man Banned From Library For Life Because He Left Anti-Trump Poem There

A 68-year-old retiree in Seymour, Indiana was a regular visitor to his local branch library and had become friendly with some employees there. In November, he brought a political poem he had written to give to a staffer he thought might like it; the person wasn't in that day, so he left the poem at the circulation desk. He...

How To Write About The Internet

A book critic considers. "Relative to the amount of space it takes up in the collective and capitalist imagination, the internet has had less of an impact on contemporary fiction than one might expect. It is increasingly acknowledged in novels, but it seems oddly difficult to represent well. I don’t know whether that’s because most of us have been...

Smiley Face Eyeroll Laughing Face Could Become Some Of The Clearest Work Communication

At least, that's what one emoji-loving CEO proposes. "Millennials and post-millennials now make up at least 65% of the workforce in the U.S. Emojis are an essential part of how most of this generation communicates in their personal life. Businesses typically view communication skills as highly valuable in employees, so why suppress such an important tool?" Ah. Side-eye surprised...

What So-Called Trashy Novels Can Teach A Reader About Life

Who could put it better than this? "There is much to learn within the pages of the so-called bonkbuster – and, no, not all of it is about sex." - The Observer (UK)

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