Romance Writers of America, which earlier this month rescinded an award given to the 2020 novel “At Love’s Command” over complaints that it “romanticized genocide” against Native Americans. - The New York Times
Wikipedia leaders presented a new initiative that could theoretically unify the information presented by all of the other Wikipedias, a proposed language-independent encyclopedia that has been generating buzz... - Slate
"Not long ago, it was one of countless bookstores along the wide avenue lined with arched windows and doorways. … Four years after the liberation of Mosul in 2017, Maktaba al-Sham is the first, and so far the only, bookshop to return to Najafi Street." - Atlas Obscura
John McWhorter: "The grand old four-letter words seem to be used as punctuation, … (and) Twitter is full of people being recreationally nasty. Yet when I listen to America talking in our times, I hear an encroaching sweetness, a flowering of deference." - The New York Times
The state has been working to revive French for decades — but the language taught in schools has been the standardized variety, very different from the dialect local elders actually speak. Now a school for adults in a small town is teaching proper Cajun. - National Geographic
BookTok is a hashtag on TikTok, where readers post videos of book recommendations, talk about writing novels and make reading-related jokes. The hashtag #BookTok currently has more than 18 billion views on TikTok. - CBC
Madeline Miller's 2011 book The Song of Achilles has, she says, helped readers come out to their parents; has inspired people to earn Ph.D.s in Classics; and even led to some intense tattoos. - The Guardian (UK)
You might call the headlines "brutally honest," if you were being kind. "Novel or Nightmare?" one asks. "Two Pathetic Books," one proclaims. - The New York Times
Rooney found immense success with her first two books - so much success that it became a challenge to writing. How did she get back to work? - The New York Times
Hilma Wolitzer - yes, the mother of Meg - has been publishing books for nearly 50 years. After losing her husband to COVID, she developed a new book. - Los Angeles Times
It's like a mini-sociology course, reading comedian memoirs. Take Tina Fey's Bossypants (which "has a truly jaw-dropping number of racist jokes") or books by Amy Poehler or Amy Schumer and compare them to memoirs by Mindy Kaling, Issa Rae, or Tiffany Haddish. - LitHub
Graphic novels by Black, Indigenous and other people of color in the 2020s are moving beyond realistic stories and memoir to fantasy and tales shaped by family and society folklore. Says one store owner and publisher, "We've hit these boom and bust cycles. ... My hope for the industry is that this continues. There's room enough for everybody's stories."...
The history of the genre is problematic at best. "Any writer writing a Western—even a literary Western—knows that they stand on the threshold of creating something that’s equally capable of rocking backward as it is of propelling forward." - LitHub
"Like Marcel, we've spent decades building our models of the world, and like him we're starting to see them for the gimcrack that they are. We're beginning to sense just how much effort is involved in holding a person together." - Literary Hub
