Many of Australia’s most prominent writers and artists, along with thousands of ordinary citizens, expressed outrage over the proposal to eliminate 39 jobs — including cutting the number of public-facing reference librarians by 60% — and refocus the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne on tourist-oriented "digital experiences." - The Guardian
Verse was used as a political tool going back all the way to the Revolutionary War. Walt Whitman considered poetry to democracy, which “waits the coming of its bards … in the twilight of dawn.” And the connection of poetry to politics continues today with Joy Harjo and Amanda Gorman. - JSTOR Daily
“For the next fifty years, females of all ages both delighted and troubled him. He was not sure he ever understood them, but … he wrote about women time and time again.” - Literary Hub
One of the more common doomsday scenarios about social media goes something like this: an internet-addicted public, hooked on the dopamine hits of engagement and the immediate satisfaction of short-form video, loses its ability to read books and gets stupider and more reactionary as a result. - The New Yorker
US diplomats have been ordered to return to using the Times New Roman typeface in official communications, with secretary of state Marco Rubio calling the Biden administration’s decision to adopt Calibri a “wasteful” diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters. - The Guardian
“‘Those who are creating the modern composition authentically are naturally only of importance when they are dead,’ Stein once wrote. Accordingly, she spent a good portion of her life making arrangements for her afterlife.” - The New Republic
There’s a sense that big publishing has stopped investing in people, authors, and good writing, and is just producing huge amounts of product, which means a completely oversaturated market and overstuffed bookstores. - LitHub
The crisis is a shame, because “generally small presses take risks that bigger publishers don’t, so we end up with some really interesting and original writing.” Then there’s the intimacy of dealing from start to finish with the physical fact of a book. - LitHub
“Austen's characters are archetypes. That's what makes them so relatable today. We all know someone who's awkward and ingratiating, like Mr. Collins, clever and independent, like Lizzie, or reticent and reserved, like Mr. Darcy.” - NPR
Rachel Reid, author of many same-sex sports romances, on Heated Rivalry’s scorching HBO debut: "It's like I opened a door and there was on the other side a million people screaming. … It’s been really cool, but also it doesn't feel real at all.” - Washington Post (Yahoo)
Performative reading has firmly implanted itself into the popular imagination, becoming a meme for a generation of people who, by all accounts, aren’t reading a whole lot of books. - The New Yorker
We all know that a lot of folks get the new mayor of New York’s name wrong - sometimes deliberately. And then there’s a museum in Paris that had a famous theft this year. But Denzel Washington? Really? - NPR
The book is not only made up of words but also concerns words. The author, who co-wrote the screenplay: "To make a 400-page novel into a 100-page script, there’s a lot of stripping back.” But then they had to add in more Shakespeare. - The New York Times
