"Today, Yiddish is most commonly used in ultra-Orthodox communities in places like Brooklyn or Jerusalem. But in Melbourne, snatches of it can be heard on certain streets, around multigenerational dinner tables, on stages and in classrooms." - The New York Times
The show’s opening last week raised further questions about its intended audience. On a hot weekday, the heavily trafficked library was closed to its constituents in preparation for a celebrity-studded evening event hosting the rapper and his VIP friends. - Hyperallergic
What about literature’s latest trend: the celebrity novel? Do the rules that apply to the celebrity memoir remain the same when it comes to celebrity-authored fiction that has been ghostwritten? Isn’t there a difference between a ghostwritten memoir and a ghostwritten novel? - The Guardian
"Since manga was first introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s, American companies have wrestled with how to adapt the genre for their readers. It requires taking into account not only art and visual concepts unique to Japanese, but also an entirely different system of reading." - The New York Times
The best thing to do is just start with any poem, because what matters about poetry is not what other people think of it or think of you reading these particular poems. What matters about poetry is which poems work for you. - The New York Times
"Some of publishing’s most celebrated and enduring editors are leaving Penguin Random House after accepting buyout packages. Meanwhile, an undetermined number of company-wide layoffs has begun, … amid a broader reorganization at (the publisher). - AP
According to a forthcoming report from The Authors Guild, the median income for a full-time writer last year was $23,000. And writers' incomes declined by 42% between 2009 and 2019. The advent of text-based generative AI applications like GPT-4 and Bard is giving writers across the country even more cause for worry. - NPR
Does it sound like a Christie plot? "That joke was not lost on the nerve-rattled people left with nothing to do but wander around her property sipping calming beverages, eating sausage rolls prepared by the staff and playing croquet on the front lawn." - Salon
"If you do two, you might as well do three! But when Harlem Shuffle came out I didn’t say it was the first in a trilogy, because what if I got bored? I wanted to give myself an out. I didn’t want it in my obituary." - The Guardian (UK)
"The 2023 iteration was expected to draw thousands of attendees to Washington in early August. But just weeks before writers from across the world were due to land, the Smithsonian abruptly canceled the event, citing 'unforeseen circumstances'" - possibly "controversial" content. - Washington Post
"State-of-the-art imaging technology has enabled the British Library to read hidden pages of William Camden's Annals for the first time. … Those pages had been either over-written or concealed beneath pieces of paper stuck down so tightly that attempting to lift them would have ripped the pages and destroyed evidence." - The Guardian
"Hungary’s right-wing government has fined a bookstore nearly €32,000 (12,000,000 forints) for displaying the award-winning young adult graphic novel Heartstopper in the children's section of the store." - Euronews
It's how people have been socialized to present themselves. "Doctors have a culture of sloppy writing; teen girls have a culture of dotting their i's with tiny hearts. Girls don't write that way because they're feminine; (it's) because they've learned that tiny hearts are associated with femininity." - MSN (The Atlantic)
The casualties are Jack Ohman of the Sacramento Bee, Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer. The newspaper chain says the move is part of a "continuing evolution … based on changing reader habits." - MSN (The Washington Post)
I have been experimenting with my literary automaton to see how well it accomplishes this task. Or, as Robot Kyle put it when I asked him to comment on the possibility of replacing me: “How could a machine generate the insights, observations, and unique perspectives that I provide as a human?” - The New Yorker
