ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

Most Of The World’s French-Speakers Are Now In Africa, And They’re Changing The Language

"Through social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube, they are literally spreading the word, reshaping the French language from African countries, like Ivory Coast, that were once colonized by France." - The New York Times

How To Judge A Translation

A bad doctor and an uncircumspect translator are both bad in proportion to the good that they would be able to perform if they were performing at their profession’s fullest potential. - 3 Quarks Daily

People Absorb Less Information Reading From Screens Than They Do From Paper. Why Is This? And Can It Be Changed?

The screen inferiority effect (as it's called) has been repeatedly documented in studies, regardless of the language or country involved. The effect is different, however, for different types of subject matter. The reasons for all this aren't clearly understood yet, but there are some clues. - Psyche

And The Oddest Book Title Of 2023 Is …

"Sound the trumpets, folks, ring the bells and most importantly crank up that old-fashioned noisemaker that goes 'a-rooo-gha', for Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn That Changed History has blown away the competition to win the 45th The Bookseller Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year." - The Bookseller (UK)

Do Kids Even Know How To Use A Dictionary In The Age Of Siri?

A terrifying thought occurred to me. “Do you even know how to use a dictionary?” This was my second son, and it turned out that my sureness of having taught him something was often a transplanted memory of having taught that very thing to my firstborn. - The American Scholar

Independent Bookstores Are Thriving In The UK

But that's not necessarily because of the books. - The Observer (UK)

Big Publishing Has Mostly Abandoned Change And Diversity

But writer, editor, and idea peddler Dhonielle Clayton is determined to drag books forward. - The New York Times

Nobel Lit Prize Winner Jon Fosse On What He Has To Say To The World

“I often say that there are two languages: The words that I wrote, the words you can understand, and behind that, there’s a silent language.” And it’s in that “silent language,” he added, that the real meaning may lie. - The New York Times

Seattle’s Iconic Hugo House In Danger Of Closing

What happens next with Hugo House won’t just impact Seattle’s literary ecosystem but could be a blueprint, or cautionary tale, for the scores of other organizations grappling with similar issues in today’s uncertain arts economy. - Seattle Times

Why On Earth Do So Many U.S. Prisons Ban Fantasy And Sci-Fi Lit?

"Is the banning of fantastical literature in prisons just carceral paranoia — or is it indicative of a larger cultural attitude that simultaneously denigrates and fears imagination? After all, prisons are part of U.S. culture which, despite a thriving culture industry that traffics in magic and fantasy, nonetheless degrades it." - Literary Hub

The Typewriters Of Legendary Authors, Now Up For Sale

"After 20 years of assembling what may be the greatest typewriter collection in the world," — owned by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Maya Angelou, Joe DiMaggio, John Lennon, Shirley Temple, and the Unabomber — "(Steve) Soboroff is putting all 33 of his beloved machines up for auction." - The New York Times

The Top 25 Most-Viewed Wikipedia Articles of 2023

Celebrity deaths were top of mind, as they are most years on Wikipedia. The list of notable deaths was the second most viewed page. - NPR

Three Congressmembers Introduce Bill To Combat Book Bans In Schools

"Introduced by Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-FL), Frederica Wilson (D-FL), and Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the Fight Book Bans Act would offer school districts funding to defend against the ongoing surge in challenges to books and educational materials that has led to thousands of titles being pulled from school library bookshelves." - Publishers Weekly

New Yorker Drops Andy Borowitz

Borowitz wrote on Facebook that “because of financial difficulties, The New Yorker has been forced to cut costs. As a result, it has decided to stop publishing The Borowitz Report. - Deadline

When Keats Was Under Investigation By The Roman Police

That's what happens when you don't tell your landlady you have tuberculosis (and streptomycin won't be invented for another 120 years). - The Guardian

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