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WORDS

Rachel Cusk’s Novel “Parade” Wins Goldsmiths Prize

Cusk was announced as the winner of the £10,000 prize, which recognises 'mould-breaking' fiction, … on Wednesday. … Parade comprises the stories of various artists, all called G. One of the Gs – based on artist Georg Baselitz – paints upside down; another is a woman with a 'wild' past, now unhappily married." - The Guardian

The History Behind The English Language’s Most Famous Swear Word

Fuck has an enormous range of uses across many parts of speech, as this dictionary details: sexual and nonsexual, positive and negative, literal and figurative, funny and violent. For any situation, there’s prob­ably some sense, some expression or catchphrase, some proverb, some intonation that can be brought to the table. - LitHub

Major European Publisher Will Start Using AI To Translate Some Novels Into English

"Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK) – the largest publisher in the Netherlands, acquired by Simon & Schuster earlier this year – is 'using AI to assist in the translation of a limited number of books. … This project contains less than 10 titles – all commercial fiction.'" - The Guardian

Arguments Over Corporate Sponsorship And Gaza War Plague Canada’s Giller Prize

It seems the director of the C$100,000 literary award had been telling authors that she was working to sever the Giller's ties to its longtime lead sponsor, Scotiabank. Then she turned around and doubled down on the Scotiabank-Giller relationship. - Toronto Star

That Idea Chimps Could Randomly Type Shakespeare? Naaah!

The results indicated that even if every chimp in the world was enlisted and able to type at a pace of one key per second until the end of the universe, they wouldn't even come close to typing out the Bard's works. - BBC

Dear Writers, Please Remember To Take Care Of Your Readers

In student writing, teachers and professors are paid to do the reading. But books? That’s a whole different exchange. - LitHub

It Turns Out Free Pizza Was A Great Bribe For Reading

Or at least, that’s how Millennials remember the Book It! program, which is - shockingly - still going strong, 40 years in, with personal pan pizzas for kids in K-6th grade who read a certain number of books. - The New York Times

The New Color Kindle May Be Having A Weird Glitch

Amazon is, perhaps unsurprisingly, getting hammered on its own site for an occasional yellow band at the bottom of the Kindle Colorsoft screen. - The Verge

The Life Of A Writer Is Often Quite Choppy, Says Author Deborah Levy

"Levy has written nine novels, two of which have been shortlisted for the Booker prize, and is clearly of the view that fiction is the real art. Nonetheless, it is her nonfiction, or her sort-of-nonfiction, that has won her legions of fans.” - The Guardian (UK)

Love Is Blind, But Make It Books

“The first thing customers see when they walk into the Strand Book Store in Manhattan is a table of anonymous books with covers wrapped like Christmas presents and titles replaced by vague descriptions.” Customers are loving this new marketing technique. - The New York Times

A Booker Shortlist Author On The Ways Language Fails

Anne Michaels, author of the spare, gorgeous Held says, "You can use brutal language to describe brutality, but that’s a lie; language can’t represent brutality. It’s exactly the same when I’m trying to get at the most beautiful, profoundly intense experience of intimacy.” - The Guardian (UK)

What Made Dorothy Parker So Potent:

For such a self-professed grump, she never left a reader hanging after a seemingly desultory setup. There was always a reward. And the jokes still work. - The New Yorker

Where (And How) The International Book Market Is Growing

A recent Nielsen BookData and GfK Entertainment report on global book sales for the first eight months of the year shows “rising revenues in fiction, while sales of nonfiction books are declining in many regions. The TikTok community BookTok is playing an increasingly important role.” - Publishers Weekly

PEN America’s CEO To Step Down After Long, Successful, And Turbulent Tenure

During her 11-year term, Suzanne Nossel, who was previously a top exec at Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International USA, oversaw a major expansion of PEN America's activities and the sextupling of its budget — as well as furious arguments among the membership over the war in Gaza. - Publishers Weekly

“Brat” Is Collins Dictionary’s Word Of The Year For 2024

"The word, used by singer Charli XCX as the title of her sixth studio album, has been defined as 'characterized by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude.' Collins lexicographers said on Friday that in the phrase 'brat summer,' it became 'one of the most talked about words of 2024.'" - AP

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