Charlie Jane Anders, formerly an active Twitter user, has some thoughts. "I wish we had a more robust book-o-sphere generally. The lifeblood of book culture is word-of-mouth and celebration of other people's stuff, and that doesn't have to happen in a sewer like Twitter." - Happy Dancing
In the nineteenth century, "The tears were a form of praise. The femaleness of response, though, became a negative." Until the trauma plot, and the meme "Do you even cry, bro?" - LitHub
It does feel a bit ironic, but it's good to have, for instance, Ukranian writer Vasily Eroshenko's "set of Esperanto fairy tales — stories about mice and flowers and paper lanterns — that are quaint on the surface but also scathing critiques of Western civilization’s deficiencies" in English. - Washington Post
Besides being a poetic masterpiece in its own right, ‘The Exaltation’ bears the distinction of being the first known work of literature that was attributed to an author whom we can identify in the historical record, rather than to an anonymous tradition or a fictional narrator. - Aeon
"NBP has been at the forefront of braille publishing since 1927. … Today, NBP produces and distributes braille books, reading materials, and technologies for the nation, with clients ranging from individual blind readers to the Library of Congress." - Publishers Weekly
The world-ending devastation of the first scathing review. The righteous indignation at the first three-star review. No one understands me. Are these people even literate? Am I even literate? It’s all too much; it doesn’t make you a better writer. Block the site and focus on your work. - The Guardian
A Goodreads blitzkrieg can derail an entire publication schedule, freak out commercial book clubs that planned to discuss the release, or even prompt nervous publishers to cut the marketing budget for controversial titles. - The Atlantic
"A group of booksellers, publishers and authors filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to stop a new law in Texas that would require stores to rate books based on sexual content, arguing the measure would violate their First Amendment rights and be all but impossible to implement." - The New York Times
Private equity firm KKR is selling RBaudio, which it bought for a reported $500 million in 2018, to Miami investment firm H.I.G. Capital at an apparent 100% profit. Industry watchers consider KKR to be a leading candidate to buy Simon & Schuster. - Publishers Weekly
As we explore new applications for large language models and consider how well they can optimize our communication, AI challenges us to reflect on the qualities we truly value in our prose. How do we measure the caliber of writing, and how well does AI perform? - Noema
"He was not seeking to escape to a purely spiritual realm. He was not seeking religion. What he sought was peace of mind. The Gita seemed to provide precisely the right philosophy for an intellectual keenly attuned to the affairs of men and the pleasures of the senses." - BBC
It’s far from clear we’re getting anything from Duolingo’s purported speed. I’m not even sure it’s fun anymore. And there are quicker ways to not learn a language. - Slate
Are you reading this on your phone, swiping up the paragraphs, swipe, swipe, swipe, wondering how far you're going to have to swipe to actually finish this thing? - Esquire
At a moment of upheaval in the arts, the suggestion that writing’s value may simply be intrinsic—a creative act worth less than the website it’s posted on—is deeply unwelcome. It can even seem like poor taste. - The Walrus
The flagging was part of a routine procedure before Smithsonian events. The institution insists that the festival was called off because the organizers were too far behind schedule on logistical planning, but some participants and observers are skeptical. - The Washington Post
