Nowadays when we speak of Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, we mostly refer to its more reputable side. But similar to the proliferation of rumors and falsehoods on social media platforms, the printing press also facilitated the circulation of rumors and fake news in sensationalist pamphlets and broadsides. - Public Books
"It’s one of those books that manage to dip into the collective unconscious of their own age and society. … Underneath the 'horror' … is always the real horror: the all-too-actual poverty and neglect and hunger and abuse that exist in America today." - The New York Times Book Review
You know, the ones about or by Black people, LGBTQIA people, and so on? Where a note on a book about Native Americans read, “negative slant on white people”? The New York City Department of Education is investigating the school. - MSN (ABC News)
That was the remit for Dune, both Part One and the strike-delayed, well-reviewed Dune, Part Two. "For language constructors — conlangers, as they are known — small touches enhance the verisimilitude of even gigantic edifices like the Dune series." - The New York Times
"I feel like I’m fusing with the photograph. There’s even a sound in my head like a whaaaa. I feel like, Oh my God, this is one of those old beautiful buildings. And what would happen if all the bookshops in the world start to close down? Hate is going to rise." - LitHub
The author of The Color of Water and Deacon King Kong has known good sales before, but now? The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store has sold more than a million copies since it came out last summer. - The New York Times
The Australia Institute report, released on Wednesday, questioned if more public money should be used for research and education instead of being directed to international academic publishers. Academic publishes are among the most profitable businesses in the world – raking in massive profit margins approaching 40% – in line with Google and Apple. - The Guardian
"Moore, best known as a short-story writer, won the fiction prize for her novel, I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home. … Blume was the recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award … (and) the American Library Association was given the Toni Morrison Achievement Award, established to honor institutions." - AP
"The Floyd County (Va.) Public Schools have suspended a One Division, One Book community reading of Katherine Applegate’s Wishtree following complaints that the middle-grade novel depicts a monoecious red oak, a tree with reproductive parts that can pollinate and flower simultaneously." - Publishers Weekly
Using a non-invasive method that harnesses machine learning, an international trio of scholars retrieved 15 columns of ancient Greek text from within a carbonized papyrus from Herculaneum, a seaside Roman town eight kilometres southeast of Naples, Italy. - The Conversation
Authors Equity brings Silicon Valley–style startup disruption to the business of books. It has a tiny core staff, offloading its labor to a network of freelancers; it has angel investors; and it is upending the way that authors get paid, eschewing advances and offering a higher percentage of profits instead. - The Baffler
Leisure reading has been linked to a range of good academic and professional outcomes—as well as difficult to fully explain. But a chief factor seems to be the household one is born into, and the culture of reading that parents create within it. - The Atlantic
"With one intriguing exception, activity increased in the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in the brain's language-processing network when these polyglots — who spoke between five and 54 languages — heard languages in which they were the most proficient compared to ones of lesser or no proficiency." - Reuters
In short, the literary weblog may have prepared the way for a critical writing about literature online that not just rivalled but eventually exceeded both in quantity and depth what had been available in general-interest print publications, but in the end it has reconstructed the apparatus that makes literary commentary an elite practice. - The Reading Experience
