“I did worry I’d lose friends. But, well, there’s no revelations of mass drug taking or orgies or anything. Because I haven’t been to any, really.” - The New York Times
Ali Smith, on her new book Gliff, and needing libraries: “The difference between information and knowledge is the difference between an ice covering across a really deep loch and the depth of that loch. That's the difference between knowing information and having knowledge. It is dimensional.” - NPR
“Han was not prepared for her new status as national hero. ‘Too much attention is not very good for writers,” she says. … ‘You need anonymity, to be able to take a stroll in the street. You really need your calm inside.’” - The Guardian (UK)
Much to the owners' surprise, business has soared at Philly Typewriter since the pandemic. Now they sell machines, train repairers, and host a Type-In. And at Philly Tech Week, there's "AI on one side of us, robotics on the other side, and yet our table is still flooded." - Broad Street Review (Philadelphia)
"The initiative, called 'Human Authored,' will allow authors to log on to the portal and register their book. They will then be able to use a specially designed logo on book covers and promotional materials to show that their work has been created without AI." - The Guardian
Our mixed feelings about machine-made signatures make plain our broader relationship to handwriting: it offers a glimpse of individuality. Any time spent doing archival research is a humbling lesson in the challenges and rewards of deciphering the handwritten word. - The Guardian
How often does a blurb from a filmmaker appear on another filmmaker’s movie poster? A blurb from a musician on another musician’s album cover? A blurb from a game designer on another designer’s game box? The argument has always been that this is what makes the book business so special. - Publishers Weekly
Writers and agents have been finding profile pages on Facebook and Instagram which appear to be those of authors but which those authors themselves never created or posted. The forged profiles use copied photos and AI-generated text; some even have chatbots posing as the authors to converse with visitors. - The Bookseller (UK)
The paper, just published in the American Journal of Physics, derives a formula to describe the dynamics of a fictional virus that is the centerpiece of the Wild Cards series of books, a shared universe edited by Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass with 44 contributing authors. - Ars Technica
Othuke Ominiabohs started Masobe – which means “let us read” in the Isoko language – in 2018 with a $7,000 (£5,600) loan from his sister. In doing so, he joined a wave of new independent African publishers nurturing emerging African writers and getting fresh, exciting literature to African readers. - The Guardian
Much can be learned by close reading poetry, which is well written, that has withstood the test of time. By reading bad poetry, however, the critic can analyze the multitude of things that can go wrong in verse. - 3 Quarks Daily
Today, the online platform that connects readers to local bookstores launched an e-reading platform of its own. For the first time, local independent bookstores can sell e-books to customers, says CEO and founder Andy Hunter. - USA Today
The company's bookstore division, which has 500 retail outlets in cities and towns throughout the UK, has seen declining revenue for years, leading to reduced spending on inventory and maintenance, leading to ever-lower customer traffic in the usual downward spiral. - Publishers Weekly
The Education Department said on Friday that it would no longer investigate schools that remove books from their libraries, emphasizing its new stance by dismissing 11 pending civil rights complaints related to book bans in public schools. - The New York Times
Or maybe holds up even better, more than two decades later: Azar Nafisi’s memoir “isn’t just about reading and teaching literature under a repressive regime, but about how literature in and of itself could serve as an antidote to all that the regime stood for.” - The Atlantic
