ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

Behind The Move To Get Rid Of Book Blurbs

There’s been a bunch of authors and publishers lately saying, “Hey, this is hugely time-consuming. It’s an incredibly emotional process. What would happen if we stopped doing all this?” - Marketplace

What’s A Bookstore To Do When An Author Becomes Problematic?

What to do about art we admire that is created by people we don’t? Most bookstores leave it in the hands of patrons. - The Star-Tribune

U.S. Book Industry Braces For Havoc Due To New Tariffs

“President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, as well as a 10% increase to tariffs on goods from China, went into effect on March 4 — and although the tariffs had been delayed once before, the publishing and printing industries are still left with questions.” - Publishers Weekly

Harper Lee’s Unpublished Short Stories To Appear In Print This Fall

“The Land of Sweet Forever compiles short fiction Lee wrote in the years before the 1960 release of her classic novel (To Kill a Mockingbird) and includes essays completed between 1961 and 2006. Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, will release the book Oct. 21.” - AP

Interjections — Those Little Junk Words We Toss Into Conversation — Serve An Important Purpose

“For many decades, linguists regarded such utterances” — mm-hmm, um, huh? and the like — “as largely irrelevant noise, the flotsam and jetsam that accumulate on the margins of language when speakers aren’t as articulate as they’d like to be. But these little words may be much more important than that.” - Knowable Magazine

Canada’s Quiet, Efficient System Of Book-Banning

Not all these phenomena constitute “banning” per se, but they all fall under what we might call the new “censorship consensus,” in which books are called upon to justify their existence through demonstrations of their moral value. - The Walrus

The True Purpose Of Book Bans Isn’t Exactly Hidden

And, concludes a huge new PEN America study, it’s clear that “the current deluge of book bans we’ve been seeing these past few years is based around white supremacist ideology.” Intertwined with that is an effort to disappear any mention of LGBTQIA+ folks - and also people with disabilities. - Book Riot

This Year’s Oscar Nominee Characters Might Be Reading These Books

For instance, “Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan is the best read of the crew—she’s using her position in the Empire to get a ton of advance galleys, even the ones that seem impossible to get a hold of.” - LitHub

What Writers Owe To Historical Fiction

Andrea Barrett: Some writers will change facts. “But that makes me queasy. I think my own sketchy, early education made me realize that for some of us, what we read in a historical novel might be all we’ll ever know about a particular period.” - Los Angeles Review of Books

Don’t Should A Reader

In stressful times, “the shoulds creep up. ... I should be reading more! I should be reading better books! I am making terrible choices with my limited time on earth!” - Reactor Magazine

Reading Books As A Bulwark Against Grief

“I wanted to gather my physical books into a wall – or better yet, a cave – around me that would both protect me from this new reality and let me cry in peace within it. Failing that, I took mental refuge in them instead.” - The Guardian (UK)

Doubleday Launches New Imprint Of Literary Trade Paperbacks

“Outsider Editions plans to reissue underappreciated literary works of all genres — including novels, story collections, memoirs, and essay collections — in an effort to ‘take our understanding of the contemporary canon and make it more expansive, more complicated, and more just.’” - Publishers Weekly

The Limits Of Language: Is There Really A Word For That?

Exploring this material—the work of philosophers, poets, and theoreticians who grappled with what it means to speak and to understand speech—can help us understand more deeply what exactly is at stake. - Boston Review

My Childhood Correspondence With Edward Gorey

“Like his stories and the little books he sent, they were florid and funny and full of deliberate effects. … But any letter from Mr. G was instructive, because he was never, ever lazy with language. Always reaching for the mot juste, he cherished terms like ‘habituated’, ‘diverting’ and ‘gelatinous’.”  - The Comics Journal

Nine UK Book Festivals Band Together

 “In light of the common funding challenges that arts organisations face and an ever-evolving media landscape, the Edinburgh International Book Festival has united with eight of its peers to create a new platform for discussion and collaboration. - The Book Seller

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