Morgan Library director of conservation Maria Fredericks: "The glove thing. It just won't die." Grolier Club director Eric Holzenberg: "Every time it comes up, I sigh deeply. And then I give my three-sentence explanation of why it's ****." And the explanation does make sense. - The New York Times
"(In Florida and) along other fronts of the culture war, bookmobiles are motoring around the country to bring banned books to all, especially in Texas, which has censored more books than any other state." - WBUR (Boston)
At its core updating Roald Dahl’s children’s books is really about the rights and control copyright grants to authors and copyright holders. Those rights are exercised to update children’s books more frequently than many of these critics may realise. - The Conversation
The conference in New Orleans was equal parts group therapy and war room, as nearly 2,000 librarians from throughout the country strategized on how to protect their patrons and themselves, and how to get the public to wake up to the urgency of the threat. - Washington Post
Blurbing has always had discontents. In 1936, George Orwell decried the use of blurbs in his essay “In Defense of the Novel.” He feared for the novel’s “lapse in prestige,” for which he partly blamed “hack reviews” and “the disgusting tripe that is written by the blurb-reviewers." - The Millions
Late in her life, virtually everything Hildegard had written was copied into a 33-pound illuminated manuscript — too heavy for Soviet soldiers to loot from a Dresden bank vault after World War II. But how to get it out of East Germany and back to the nuns at Hildegard's abbey? - Literary Hub
This re-engagement with Black authors of the past is being led by a fresh cohort of literary tastemakers: younger authors in search of ancestors; publishers eager to excavate Black literature, film and television executives in search of intellectual property; social media influencers on Bookstagram... - The New York Times
One author "said while he believes using sensitivity readers to rewrite classical literature like Dahl is problematic, employing them to work on in-progress manuscripts can be an important aspect of the writing process." - CBC
"The project impacted encompasses three 22-story office towers and 'The Helix,' a dystopian 'corporate conference center' and excellent place to die. So far, developers have only gotten as far as digging a parking garage." - LitHub
British writer Hanif Kureishi told Prospect Magazine that “nobody would have the balls today to write The Satanic Verses.” He might have added that no one would have the balls to defend it. Most writers, Kureishi continued, live quietly, and “they don’t want a bomb in the letterbox.” - Harper's
Partly because I am this strange thing called a linguist and partly because I am the kind of linguist who wants to know a little of every language on Earth, I have curled up with this book with a glass of wine countless times over the past couple of months just to savor the cornucopia that this dictionary is....
Despite the indignation of the critics and the high-mindedness of the revisers, the truth is that most of the edits to the Dahl books are of very little importance. Many are slight (replacing “old hag” with “old crow”) or inscrutable... - The New York Times
"These changes ... are handed down in communiqués written by obscure 'experts' who purport to speak for vaguely-defined 'communities,' remaining unanswerable to a public that's being morally coerced. ... The liturgy changes without public discussion, and with a suddenness and frequency that keep the novitiate off-balance, forever trying to catch up." - MSN (The Atlantic)
Did it start out as a few modest tweaks but got out of hand? In any case, there’s a loss in these changes—in vivacity, vigor, concreteness. As any good writer can tell you, we all know what a screechy voice sounds like, but an annoying one could be anything.
